How To Create Buyer Personas That Actually Work

Have you ever wished you could read your customer’s mind?

Well buyer personas are the best tool in the marketing world.

If you’ve ever noticed your marketing efforts aren’t connecting the way you would like, you’re likely trying to speak to all of your audiences with one message. What’s the secret to more effective marketing? Speaking one to one and focusing on a specific client. Buyer personas allow you to improve your marketing results, and they’re one of the best tools used by successful marketers to engage their targeted audience.

Step 1 - Understanding Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal customer. Picture this part of the process as a detailed character sketch combining facts and insights about real customers.

Step 2 - Gathering Real Data

Start with real, current information. Research insights from your website analytics, social media, sales calls, and interviews. Talk to real customers about what they want and what you can provide. It's about finding a middle ground between fulfilling your customers' needs and your own goals. Strike the right balance to strengthen your relationship with customers. This also about building your connections and creating more data for future use.

Step 3 - Look For Patterns

Review your data and find similarities. Then proceed to associate and group people by traits, goals, or challenges. You can do this online or manually using sticky notes as long as you have a visual demonstration for the team.

Step 4 - Build the Persona Profile

During the process of developing personas, personalization is key. The persona should represent your audience and future audiences. Every profile can and should be different based on multiple factors: name, photo, demographics, goals, challenges, background, favorite channel and more.

Step 5 - Share & Use It

Once you’re finished creating your personas, you should consider posting them in a communal area for reference by the team. Referencing the personas will prove useful when writing and creating content.

Real Life Examples - How effective are Buyer Personas?

Companies big and small utilize personas to create attention-grabbing email, social media posts, and blog posts.

• David Moscoso Design Studio, a local business, utilizes buyer personas to stand with their clients and potential clients, For example, buyer personas are created with actual client data to align with their business and potential buyers.

• Nike builds personas for athletes of all levels to make each of their ads feel personal. The end goal of creating buyer personas is to be relatable to their desired potential clients.

Now you’re ready to create your own personalized buyer personas to successfully attract targeted potential clients. You will successfully build long lasting connections in your buyer persona journey.

Happy buyer persona building!