You’ve probably heard the term buyer persona quite a bit in business. If you’re a business owner with a product to sell, no doubt you also have a buyer persona. But do you know what it is? Knowing your buyer persona can be a game-changer in the field of sales. This is crucial information for any business, and when you don’t know it, you’re most likely losing business.
But your buyer persona is unique to your business, no one else’s. So it’s nothing that you would compare to another company. If you’ve been hearing the phrase buyer persona, with little knowledge of what it means and would like to know more, this post is for you.
We will help you understand what a buyer persona is and why it’s important for any business. We’ll look at the top eight reasons why buyer persona is essential to your business.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a description of who your ideal customers are. This description details who they are, what their days are like, the challenges they face and how they make their decisions. It’s also known as a customer profile. It’s not uncommon to have more than one buyer persona because your business may be catering to different levels of people.
For example, if before the end-user of your product makes the buying decision, they have to get approval from others, every person involved in that decision-making process is now a separate persona for your business.
Each persona for your business has different needs and criteria, and you would treat them each like different types of customers.
Why are Buyer Personas Important to Your Business?
Buyer personas are important because they help to remind the business why they’re in the business in the first place. The buyer persona provides the profile of the customer’s wants and needs, so the business is always reminded of this. This puts the business in a better position to know how to strategize for marketing because it’ll understand what its ideal customer needs. It also guides the activities needed to acquire the customer they serve by tailoring it to their needs.
Without a buyer persona, a business wouldn’t know who they’re selling to and, therefore, would not be able to present their product or service in a way that resonates with anyone. When you know who you’re serving, why you’re serving them, and what their needs are, you’re better able to connect and cause them to take action on your site. This ideal customer will have multiple opportunities to get to know you as a business. Eventually, they’ll trust you because you are catering to their specific needs.
How Can Buyer Personas Be Used in Marketing
You can’t use a buyer persona until you’ve identified who your customer is. This is something that needs to be identified across the board in all departments. It’s important that all divisions know who they’re serving so there are no inconsistencies when it comes to resolving issues. Even if there are multiple personas, each division should always know which persona they’re targeting for any marketing campaigns.
Once there’s consistency about the ideal customer, you can use that to guide the direction of your work. In this regard:
- Buyer personas will help with product development – This will help to build product roadmaps to identify and prioritize changes to product offerings because it will be based on what the customer needs.
- Buyer personas will help with marketing – This will help build effective marketing strategies by using keywords when researching and creating good copy.
- Buyer personas will help with sales – This will help the sales team build rapport with customers because they understand their problems and what they’re dealing with.
- Buyer personas will help with serve customers – This will help the support team be more empathetic and compassionate as they’re trying to solve customers’ problems. When they understand the issues potential customers and customers deal with, they are better able to help with patience and understanding. Customers know when people are compassionate and empathetic to them. This goes a long way with customers trusting your business and your products. Because you understand, they know they can trust your products to fix their problems.
How do You Create a Buyer Persona for Your Business?
There’s no one way to create a buyer persona, but it’s best to start small and build up in creating it. As stated earlier, it’s possible to have multiple buyer personas, so focus on one target audience at a time. Here’s one way to create your buyer persona:
- Identify a target customer.
- Research your customer by asking questions that relate to their:
- Demographics (age, gender, children, marital status, location, income, education)
- Professional Info (job title, career path, special skills, what their day is like, etc.)
- Goals and Challenges (personal/career goals, how can you help, etc.)
- Values and fears (what do they value, what’s important to them, etc.)
- Where are they (what media platform, how do they communicate, etc.)
- Create a persona based on your research.
- Further, enhance it by talking with customers or having them complete surveys.
- Repeat for the next identified target customer to establish their persona.
You continue to enhance it because buyer personas should not be static documents. They tend to evolve as you learn more about your customer(s) by surveys, feedback, etc. So be patient, and update this document throughout your business journey.
8 Reasons Why Buyer Persona is Essential to Your Business
If you’re still not sure that putting in the work to prepare a buyer persona is a good use of your time or your team’s time, here are eight reasons why a buyer persona is essential to your business:
Attracting Your Ideal Customer
A buyer persona is essential to your business because it helps to attract and retain your ideal customer. Once you have the customer profile in place, everything your company does is crafted around that ideal customer. The marketing team markets to that customer and the sales team sell to that customer. The customer support understands that customer’s issue and patiently works with them to help them solve their problem. Because of all of this attention, the customer continues to come back. Once you know the customer you’re looking for, you appeal to them; you attract them to you and continue to appeal, so they keep returning.
Identify Needs and Wants
Having a product or service that nobody wants or needs can be a big waste of time. Wouldn’t it be better to know the person you’re looking for to purchase your product? When you know who needs what you’re selling, it’s easier to find them and attract them to your brand. Eventually, if you engage enough, they will become buyers and returning customers.
Understand Purchasing Decisions
When you know what drives your customers to make purchases, you can use that to your advantage. You’ll be able to target your potential customer better and move them through the sales funnel until they purchase.
Behavioral Insight
Knowing your potential customer’s online behavior helps to provide insight on how to communicate with them. Knowing where they spend their time and where they like to browse are all insights into knowing your audience. This helps to keep you in front of them until they realize they are interested in what you’re selling.
Consistent Messaging
When your teams know the audience they’re appealing to, it sends a broad message, and there should be no doubt about who they’re providing content for. The messaging across the board will be catered to the same audience. Every product, service, blog post, marketing email, and customer service response is consistent in message and aligns with the customer’s needs and expectations. All of the content you develop should be catered to the needs of at least one customer persona.
Strengthen Your Offering
Maintaining a customer list is essential to your business. Because you have loyal customers, they will consider buying other products from you. Boost email campaigns and other product offerings and services that you feel would benefit your customer. When you know their likes and dislikes you know which services or products would best interest them. And also, when first-time visitors come to your site, make sure you ask them questions that will help you know which persona they fit into. This way you will know how how to attract them in the future.
Buyer Personas Are Tools That Will Help You Engage With Your Customers
When you know your customer’s needs and wants, you gain a sense of who they are. Having a buyer persona makes it effortless to easily engage with your customer. You’re presenting them with what you know is of value to them. They, in turn, will react to that by taking some type of action on your site.
It Will Make You an Effective Marketer
Your entire marketing strategy can be built around your customer’s wants, needs, pain points, and expectations.
At Business Marketing Engine, we offer a variety of solutions to help you take your business to the next level. Contact or call us today at 888-618-9123 to see how we can help.