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Creating Your Buyer Personas
- An Owner Manager’s Guide -
Better Marketing. Better Business.
First, a Tale About Fishing
In my days as a traditional marketer, we had a saying, “Fish where the fish are” referring to our target market. This
mainly dealt with demographic data at a geographical level and the philosophy was that people of similar
demographics would gravitate towards one another and reside within secular groups.
While this principle was better than a blanket approach to marketing and provided some level of segmentation, it was
lacking for companies that targeted other businesses.
If we consider a fisherman on a weekend getaway at the Norfolk Broads, the river represents his target market. Within
it there are plenty of fish and if he casts his line, he is sure to catch a fish.
But what if he specifically wants to land bream. He would have to study bream and know which type of bait they
prefer, what tackle he should use, which area of the lake to focus on and what time of day is more likely to see bream
activity.
Better Marketing. Better Business.
First, a Tale About Fishing
Our fisherman is well-equipped. He knows that bream are predominantly nocturnal feeders and therefore
late evening or early morning fishing would be best. He knows that bream favour bread, maggots, casters,
sweetcorn, worms and ground bait. By understanding their preferences and habits, our fisherman is far
more likely to hook a bream than any other fish.
The fisherman’s knowledge of bream can be compared to a marketer’s buyer persona profile. As marketers
we need to understand our ideal customers’ challenges, interests, needs, attitudes and behaviours in order
to successfully ‘feed’ them with the content that will ‘hook’ them as customers.
So, let’s take a deeper look at buyer personas, shall we?
Better Marketing. Better Business.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. They are a profile of this ‘person’s’
role, challenges, needs, concerns and behaviours.
Buyer personas are usually given role-orientated names, such as Marketing Manager Mary, Salesman Stan,
HR Director Harriet or IT Technician Ian. We also assign a photo to a buyer persona to ‘bring them to life’
and give them a physical identity that we can picture in our minds when we create content for them.
Strong buyer personas are based on objective market research and insights from your customer base
through interviews or surveys. Your specific business will dictate whether you have 1,2 or 10 buyer
personas. If you’re starting out, rather keep it to a minimum at first and build out more as you grow.
Better Marketing. Better Business.
What is a Buyer Persona?
Our fisherman is well-equipped. He knows that bream are predominantly nocturnal feeders and therefore
late evening or early morning fishing would be best. He knows that bream favour bread, maggots, casters,
sweetcorn, worms and ground bait. By understanding their preferences and habits, our fisherman is far
more likely to hook a bream than any other fish.
The fisherman’s knowledge of bream can be compared to a marketer’s buyer persona profile. As marketers
we need to understand our ideal customers’ challenges, interests, needs, attitudes and behaviours in order
to successfully ‘feed’ them with the content that will ‘hook’ them as customers.
So, let’s take a deeper look at buyer personas, shall we?
Better Marketing. Better Business.
How Do You Use a Buyer Persona?
When it comes to inbound marketing, you use your buyer persona to inform practically every decision
regarding your efforts. From what to blog about, to where to publish, what format to use and what words to
use in your social posts. Every content piece and action is created with the buyer persona in mind.
When you have multiple buyer personas, it becomes particularly helpful to be able to target and personalise
your marketing for the various segments. You could, for example, send different emails to each buyer
persona based on their specific requirements or needs.
Buyer personas are incredibly powerful when we cross reference them with the stage of the buyer journey
our prospects are in. This insight helps us create hyper-targeted content for our buyer persona.
Better Marketing. Better Business.
How to Create a Buyer Persona?
One word – Research!
The most critical aspect about creating a buyer persona is to base the profile on objective market research.
That means leaving your subjective inferences about who you think your ideal customer is, and turning to
interviews and surveys of your actual customer base for insight. For best results you should also look
outside of your existing database to prospects that match your target audience.
Methods to collect data for buyer persona creation:
• Interview customers to determine what they like (and dislike) about your product, service and company
• Study the behaviour of your contacts base to uncover how customers and leads find and consume
content
• Chat to your sales and support teams to learn about frequently asked questions, the typical sales cycle
timeline, common challenges facing clients and the objections they regularly encounter
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Your Buyer Persona
Persona Name:
Give Your Persona a Name.
Background:
What’s their role?
Career path?
Family?
Demographics:
Male / Female?
Age?
Income?
Location?
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Your Buyer Persona
Identifiers:
Demeanor?
Communication
preferences?
Goals:
Primary goal?
Secondary goal?
Challenges:
Primary challenge?
Secondary challenge?
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Your Buyer Persona
Real Quotes:
About goals,challenges?
Common Objections:
Why wouldn’t they buy
your product or service?
What Can We Do:
… to help our persona achieve
their goals?
… to help our persona
overcome their challenges?
Better Marketing. Better Business.
Your Buyer Persona
Marketing Message:
How should you describe
your solution to your
persona?
Elevator Pitch:
Sell your persona on your
solution!
Better Marketing. Better Business.
Compiled by Struto
www.struto.co.uk
Better Marketing. Better Business.