Do you use Buyer Personas? Here’s Why You Should.
When you’re first starting out in business, every customer can feel like a friend.
You know their likes and dislikes, where they’re from and what they’re looking for. As you grow, this depth of knowledge becomes harder. The more customers you have, the less time you’re able to dedicate to each one’s needs.
So, how do you stay personal as your business grows? In marketing, we like to use buyer personas. In this article, we’re going to explain all you need to know about buyer personas – from what they are to why you need them and how to create one.
What is a buyer persona?
Buyer personas are semi-fictional profiles that describe your ideal customers. They are backed by research from your business – including data and insights, interviews, surveys and more.
Buyer personas have two purposes. First, they help you define the types of customers your business is actively engaging. Second, they can be a good starting point when you decide you want to target a new type of customer. But we’ll share more on that later.
In most cases, businesses will use positive buyer personas to describe customers who purchase from or interact with their business regularly. Sometimes, a business might design a negative persona as well. This is a character who does not purchase from you or who negatively interacts with your business. Where positive buyer personas are about who you want to attract, negative personas describe the types of customers to avoid.
How many buyer personas do you need?
There’s no set number of buyer personas that a business should have. For smaller businesses, one or two is usually sufficient. Some larger businesses may have up to 20 different personas – but that’s because they have a wide range of products or services. Your instincts will guide you on the right number of buyer personas that are useful without becoming overwhelming.
How to create a buyer persona
Building a buyer persona is surprisingly simple! It’s all about customer research. There are three key places to look:
Your data sources: this could be your website analytics, past buying behaviour or transactional data, your social profiles or your email list.
Your team: does your sales team frequently get asked the same questions? Has your social media team noticed any common issues? For small business owners, you’re probably wearing all those hats. In this case – ask yourself the same questions.
Your customers: surveys and interviews are a great way to get an understanding of why your customers choose your business, what they want to see from you next and any feedback they may have.
As you compile your research, you should be looking for patterns. You might notice that most of your customers come from the same age group or location. They might share the same pain points or have similar reasons for investing with your business.
As you discover patterns, you can start grouping them together. For example, lots of customers from the same location may have purchased the same product. Using that as a starting point, dig deeper on those customers to find out more about them. Take all the similarities you find in that customer group and assign them to a generic character, or persona, who can represent them as a whole.
There are lots of useful questions you can ask to help define your patterns. Examples include:
What problems or needs do they have that you can help solve? How do you solve it?
Where did they buy your product? Was it in store? Online? Over the phone?
How do they communicate with your business? Through email? Social media? Chat bot?
What reasons did they have for choosing your business?
Or, why did they not choose you? How could you overcome the reasons they did not choose you?
Why does your business need buyer personas?
You might be thinking – if my business has customers, what does it matter who they are? Why should I build a persona around them? While we understand your logic, we also know this is the kind of thinking that can hamper business growth. There are many reasons that buyer personas are a good idea. Here are a few of our top ones:
Personalise your marketing strategy
The top reason most businesses choose to develop buyer personas is so they can define and personalise their marketing. When you know who you’re talking to, it becomes far easier to send a message that resonates. You can also use personalisation tools – like email segmentation – to better communicate with your different personas.
Attract better quality leads
How much time do you spend convincing customers to invest with you? What if they were already halfway there? When you identify the ideal customer type for your business, you’re more likely to attract warm leads. These are people who have an interest in your product or service and are ready to hear more about how it benefits them.
Increase your ROI
Marketing costs money. Whether your budget goes to advertising, employees or outsourced marketing solutions like Ebony & Salt – you need to invest to get your message across. When you have a defined target audience, you can expect a greater ROI. You’ll stop wasting money on an audience who were never likely to choose your business.
Discover your most profitable demographics
Creating buyer personas requires lots of research. A benefit to going in-depth on your existing customers is finding out who has been the most profitable. Building a persona around that customer type can help you to target potential customers who look like them. You’ll also know who is worth an extra budget allocation as they’re more likely to return the favour. In other words, it helps ensure your ROI on acquisition investment.
Humanise your brand
In our increasingly digital world, it can be hard to make your business feel human. Buyer personas ask you to connect with your customers’ pain points and challenges – giving you a deeper, more human connection to their needs. When you market to them in this way, they feel like you understand them and are better able to solve their problems.
Enter new markets
Entering any new market can be a risk, but with a research-backed buyer persona you can gain a bit of extra confidence. We mentioned earlier that a buyer persona can be used to target new types of customers. Researching the type of customer who is looking for your new product or service will help you design a launch that appeals to them.
Do small businesses need buyer personas?
We won’t lie to you – building buyer personas takes time. And that’s a resource you rarely have. But, we do believe the pros outweigh the cons on this one. Making buyer personas work for a small business should be more about using your time wisely, rather than spreading yourself too thin.
First, try not to overstretch yourself by building too many personas. As we said earlier, even one to two is enough to help you make smarter business decisions. A good way to decide which personas to build is to consider your best customers. What do they have in common? How can you make their experience with you more personal?
Second, keep an open mind while you’re doing customer research. Rather than thinking about only your existing products and services, look for new opportunities you may be missing. This is a great way to add value for existing customers rather than always attracting new ones to your business.
Finally, use your buyer personas across every marketing channel. You can use them to decide what kind of blog topics to write, who to spend your advertising budget on and how often to send emails. Once you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a persona – make sure it’s getting full use for your business.
Save time on marketing with Ebony & Salt
If there’s one thing we know about business owners, it’s that they never seem to have enough time. It’s not hard to see why – when you really think about it. They wear every hat for their business, including the ones that aren’t their forte. So, when it comes to things like buyer personas – you can bet that falls to the bottom of the pile
Let us show you another way. With Ebony & Salt, your marketing will be fully-managed. We provide the functionality of an in-house marketing department, at a cost you can afford. Want to know more? Contact us for an introductory chat – we promise it’s worth your time.