We know that you want your marketing campaigns to show results.
And not the kind that makes you say, “Ugh.” You want results that make you jump out of joy, and for that, you need to…STOP.
“We this. We that. Our product this. Our product that.” – Stop throwing out an “I, me, and myself” narrative at the buyer with absolutely zero consideration of his needs and wants.
Sorry, but you can’t appeal to customers if you don’t know what they like, how they live, or what they want. It will only lead to the downfall of your business.
You need to have a clear-cut idea of who you should be targeting with your marketing message – and why. That’s exactly where buyer personas come into play.
Whatever type of buyer you’re looking for, if you want to bring them on board, you NEED to have a crystal clear buyer persona, and these stats prove that:
- 56% of companies have generated higher quality leads using buyer personas. (Source)
- Behaviorally targeted ads are more effective than non-targeted ads. (Source)
- 24% of companies generated more leads using buyer personas. (Source)
- 93% of companies who exceed revenue goals segment their database by buyer persona. (Source)
That’s the power of buyer personas! They are the foundation for building your marketing house. They help you better adapt your efforts to the preferences of your ideal customer.
The result? When you’ll interact with your prospects, they won’t think “here’s another marketer trying to shove their product in my face” but “wow, these guys actually know what I need!”
Believe us, when potential customers feel heard and understood, something magical happens. However, making a stranger feel seen and heard is not an easy feat.
So to help you pull it off, we’ll walk you through what buyer personas are, and how to create one in a clear, manageable, step-by-step way. Let’s go!
What Exactly is a Buyer Persona? (Definition)
Long story short, a buyer persona is a fictional character, but it represents very real people – your customers.
These personas are made up of existing customer data, past observations, quantified research, industry research, and much, much more.
Using buyer personas, you can visualize the people you’re selling your product to and build marketing strategies that are tailored to their values, buying habits, goals, fears, content preferences, and pain points.
Here’s the most important part: A buyer’s persona is more than just “Joey, a stay-at-home dad” OR “Rachel, a young-working adult” OR “Ross, an HR Manager”.
It takes an in-depth look at things, and this is what it actually looks like:
“Ross, 40 years old, married, has a bachelor’s degree in HR and a busy professional routine, trying to find a balance between family and work.”
With such a clear picture of who you’re marketing to, it’s much easier to develop effective strategies that speak right to your ideal buyer!
Well now that you know the nitty-gritty of a buyer persona, let’s check out a few more reasons that will make you jump on the buyer persona bandwagon.
Read more: 9 Customer Acquisition Strategies Your Boss Wishes You Knew!
Reasons Why You Need to Create a Buyer Persona
1. The Abundance of Information
The world of advertisements is overflowing with information.
If you want to get your potential buyers to listen to what you’re saying, you need to tell them precisely what they want to hear, and the best way to do that is by creating a buyer’s persona for each potential buyer.
To cut through the noise, you have got to spend time analyzing your buyers’ profiles and creating a solid buyer persona. It’s just something you can’t afford to avoid.
Without it, you’ll just waste time and money wandering around in the gigantic market, hoping to run into a viable prospect. It is what it is.
2. Demystifies your Customers
A buyer persona helps you get a clear picture of the problems your customers are facing, their values, things they like, things they don’t, and more.
With such detailed (and accurate) demographic and psychographic information, you can address things much more intelligently.
And, of course, you should always know the person you want to send your message to. You should always craft messages that speak directly to them and their needs.
Because when your target buyer feels heard and understood, they are more likely to buy!
3. Helps in Understanding a Customer’s Buying Behavior
Whenever we go out with our friends, the toughest decision is where to eat. Always.
Everyone has different tastes, different preferences. ‘A’ wants a cheeseburger while ‘B’ doesn’t want to sit outdoors. ‘C’ only wants to eat desserts while ‘D’ doesn’t want to spend more than 20 dollars.
All these people and their set of preferences are an example of a buyer persona. Each of these personas is like a guide that will direct you towards the message that’ll appeal to them the most!
These personas will force you to think of your prospects as individuals whose decisions are based on certain components of their persona.
Buyer personas simply make sense. After all, they help you to find your best customers.
But, here’s the catch: they only work when you create them correctly. Creating personas that don’t reflect your buyers’ true perspective at all will end up doing more harm than good.
This is why you need to learn how to create a perfect buyer persona, and we’ll help you with that. Let’s roll!
Read more: Market Targeting: What is it & How to do it Perfectly? (Steps Included)
The Four Steps You Need to Take to Create a Good Buyer Persona
Step 1: Research, Research & Research
First things first, get a gauge on who your customers are, what they want, and what their problems are.
You can figure this out by conducting surveys, interviewing your current customers, and looking at your competitors’ customers.
The main areas you should pay attention to are demographics, education, career, daily life, finances, browsing behavior, goals, pain points, and product preferences.
When you understand how they think, you’ll understand how they buy. Plain and simple.
Step 2: Segment Your Audience
Let’s suppose you own a furniture store.
A college student might come there looking for cheap furniture, and a young married couple might come there to buy a crib for their baby.
If you bombard a college student with ads and emails about baby cribs, you’ll just end up wasting your money and frustrating your potential customers.
Moral of the story: You can’t treat your audience as a single unit and you definitely can’t build one message and campaign for your entire audience.
You need to segment your audience and build personalized campaigns for each persona. This will make your audience feel like your brand really knows them and offers just what they need.
Step 3: Don’t Forget to Add a Name & Story
Well yes, a buyer persona is just a bunch of data, but you’ve to give your persona a name like ‘Accountant Chandler’. Then, find a stock photo to give them a face.
We know this sounds silly, but it’s very important because when your persona has a name, they’re easier to relate to as a “real person” and it humanizes your marketing effort.
While you’re at it, give them a back story too. For instance:
Are they a parent? Do they volunteer at an NGO? Do they want to retire soon? What parts of their job are difficult? Do they like to purchase things online?
Take the time and write down each and everything you’ve discovered in your research!
Step 4: Craft Tailored Marketing Strategies
You now know the problems your audience needs to solve, what gets them riled up, what they don’t like at all and what makes them laugh.
In short, you’re well on your way to craft messages that best speak to your audience, capture their attention and make you stand out from the rest.
All there’s left for you to do is creating sales and marketing strategies that revolve around your audiences’ needs and desires. So, start creating campaigns that put your audience in front and center.
Once that’s done, distribute your message in the places your audience is hanging out and you’ll have much more chances of persuading them to become your customer.
Okay, you’re now well aware that you need to create buyer personas for your business. They sound super helpful, so you know that you SHOULD create them.
But, let’s be honest – creating a buyer persona can get very intricate and overwhelming, especially when you’re already swamped with so many other tasks.
Wait! Before you rush or skip through the process of creating buyer personas, we’ll let you in on a little secret:
There is a documentation tool out there that simplifies the entire process of building buyer personas. Curious to know which tool we’re talking about? Read on!
Bit.ai – The Tool That Will Assist You in Creating Buyer Personas (And Every Other Document)
Looking to up your buyer persona game? Bit.ai is just what you need! This highly intuitive and interactive tool centralizes all your tasks related to creating buyer personas – be it formatting, co-editing, organizing, and sharing!
Using Bit.ai, you can create beautiful buyer personas, organize all your research data under workspaces, and work on the personas with your team in real-time, and more!
Now buckle up, because we’re going to elaborate on these mind-blowing features of Bit.ai:
1. Workspaces & Folders: Research data, survey results, audience segments – there are hundreds of documents that you have to take care of while creating buyer personas. This is why this feature of Bit is THE BOMB. On Bit, you can create infinite workspaces around projects, teams, and departments to keep all your work organized.
2. Pre-Built, Beautiful & Fully-Responsive Templates – Bit offers 90+ gorgeous document templates and takes care of the design and formatting aspect for you. Just focus on your research and content, and leave it to Bit to do the rest!
3. Real-Time Collaboration: Okay, this is probably one of the coolest features of Bit. (Who are we kidding? Every feature of Bit is cool.) Using Bit, you can collaborate with your team in real-time and keep your entire team on the same page – no matter where they are. You can co-edit, make inline comments, and much more!
4. Interactive Documents: Want to make your buyer personas more comprehensive and detailed? Just embed rich media in them and make them come alive. You can add videos from the interviews you took, your audiences’ social media posts, charts, surveys, polls – basically any kind of rich media you can think of in your Bit document!
All in all, Bit.ai is definitely the tool you can fall back on when you want to create buyer personas and any other type of document that exists.
Wrapping Up
It isn’t uncommon for businesses to think that they’re the main character in their stories.
But here’s a simple truth: Without customers to buy your products, your business is not going to make any money, and you cannot sell anything without knowing your customer. Period.
So, you’ve to put yourself into the shoes of your customer and understand their pain points, needs, wants, dreams and aspirations.
You have to create content that puts them in the limelight, just what a buyer persona helps you with. It is the guiding light that’ll lead you to success!
Make this a priority for 2021: create a buyer persona for each of your key audience segments.
After all, we’ve already given you a head start by telling you everything that goes into a great buyer persona, so there’s no reason not to create one!
Further reads:
Marketing Report: Definition, Types, Benefits & Things to Include!
Brand Authenticity: Definition, Importance & Tips To Build It!
Social Media Proposal: What is it & How to Create it?
Marketing Research: Definition and Process to Follow!
Marketing Funnel: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps included)
Growth Marketing for Startups: A Complete Guide
Product-Market Fit: What is it & How to Achieve it?
Buyer’s Journey: What is it & it’s 4 Key Stages You Must Know!
Customer Journey vs Buyer Journey: The Key Differences!
