A buyer persona (or customer persona) is a detailed description of a fictional client that represents your target audience. The buyer persona is an example of your ideal client profile (ICP). With that said, not all businesses have a single buyer persona. If you are selling multiple products or services, your business may have multiple personas.
Aside from time and patience, creating a buyer persona requires strategy and an inquisitive mind. By strategically analysing your existing (and most high value) clients’ behaviours, trends, and similarities, you can generate a marketing and sales strategy built around their objectives, challenges, and pain points.
Your buyer persona should include the following details:
Location
Where are your clients located? Do you have clients only locally or at a global level?
Personal demographics
Age, gender, income, marital status, education, etc.
Professional demographics
Job title, industry, company size, etc.
Psychographics
Interests, hobbies, favourite activities, behavioural traits, etc.
This data on your audience will help inform your buyer persona as a strategic asset, which will guide your marketing efforts. A buyer persona creates a face for your ideal client, giving you someone to direct your messaging to, and who addresses pain points and business challenges.
Example:
As an example, let’s apply this thinking to fictional business coach Lindi,
a 29-year-old mom and entrepreneur who lectures a “Moms with Power” masterclass at her local chamber of commerce.
Lindi’s buyer persona must represent the ICP for this masterclass. It must be a client who cares for work-life balance and for meeting their goals as an entrepreneur and mom. This means that Lindi must cater to these needs and address these challenges, such as flexibility for attending classes, providing remote learning, and addressing their struggles as a businesswoman and mother.
Why use a Buyer’s Persona?
A buyer persona allows marketing and sales teams to envision their ICP and thus facilitate outreach by adequately addressing their pain points. Having a “face” for marketing makes it easier to craft content and develop products that resonate with the needs and behaviors of your audience.
Key ingredients to build your Buyer Persona
Categories and name
Give your persona a name, and identity, and include categories (age, job, hobbies, etc.) to further humanize the target of your marketing campaigns.
Understand demographics
Demographic data helps you understand your ideal client’s circumstances and provides a foundation for their expected behaviors.
Define Psychographics
What makes your persona unique, including their activities, interests, hobbies, etc.
Discover their goals
Define the “big picture” in their professional and personal lives, their challenges, and their priorities.
Personal preferences
What media platforms they engage with, their content format preferences, the conferences they attend, etc.
How to use your Buyer Persona
Brand voice and messaging
Use your buyer persona as the “ideal target” for your brand messaging. This will help it resonate more with prospects and provide creatives a “face” to guide their work.
Personalization and marketing segmentation
A buyer persona will guide your personalization of marketing assets and the segmentation of your target audience. Having multiple buyer personas can provide more accuracy for these campaigns.
Client support
A buyer persona can help guide client support workflows, chatbots, and client success efforts with an “ideal client” to delight with your brand’s offerings.
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