Mastering the Art of Buyer Personas: Tips and Tricks for Success
10-minute read
Creating buyer personas is not only important for understanding your audience in order to produce copy and marketing material that resonates, but it is also one of your most important sales strategies.
Buyer personas should be precious living documents used and referenced throughout the customer journey, for an Instagram post, website copy, or the way a sales rep gives a sales demo.
Let’s look at how you can master the art of buyer personas and start integrating the right language and approach for your audience.
What Are Buyer Personas?
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. Except they are not so imaginary, it is based on actual data.
It’s about taking ‘knowing your customer’ to the next level. As Donald Miller from Storybrand says, to make a sale is like asking your customer to marry you, and before that, you are constantly trying to take them on a date.
What better way to do that than to build a profile of all their likes and dislikes, what makes them tick, and what their day-to-day looks like?
How to Create Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are a crucial component of any successful marketing strategy.
By building buyer personas, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and their motivations, pain points, and buying habits.
Let’s break it down into 3 steps.
Step #1 Investigate
Identify Your Customer Segments
This is an important first step, without it you will be shooting in the dark and overcomplicating the process.
This involves categorizing your customers based on common characteristics such as demographics, behavior patterns, and purchasing habits.
Understanding your customer segments allows you to tailor your marketing efforts and product offerings to meet their specific needs and pain points.
The segments need to be different enough that the data you gather will actually help you cater to the different segments, while at the same time try not to appeal to everyone. When you market to everyone, you market to no one.
Investigate Your Own Data + New Data
Investigating your own and new data is critical in developing buyer personas.
This is of course only possible if you have been in business for a while, but it’s important to not ignore them. They bought your offering, do you know why? It’s not all for the same reason, that’s for sure.
This involves analyzing data from various sources such as your website analytics, social media, and customer service interactions.
In addition to your own data, it's important to gather new data through market research, surveys, and industry reports.
This information can provide valuable insights into customer preferences, pain points, and emerging trends in the market. Integrating both your own data and new data will give you a comprehensive understanding of your target audience and help you build a more accurate and effective buyer persona.
Step #2 Build
Start building!
Break down your findings into bullet points, something easily digestible by any team member.
Demographic & Identifiers
This section might feel like the most straightforward, but in reality, the more you get into the nitty gritty, the more you connect with your customers.
➜ Age
➜ Income
➜ Region
➜ Lifestyle
➜ Gender identity
➜ Generation
➜ Communication tools
➜ Social media
➜ News
➜ Related services/products
Make sure to also break down their challenges and goals in life and in relation to your product and services. It will allow you to uncover exactly what drives their decisions, and what else they might prioritize compared to what you are offering them.
Step #3 Uncover The Why
How do you fit in the picture?
Now that you have this data, it is really important for you to identify exactly how you fit in the picture and what you bring to the table.
Hopefully, you have also drawn out different use cases and reasons why one might need your product, and have a well-defined value proposition.
You can now tailor your offerings and use the right language and content strategy that will land with your customers.
This not only increases the chances of a successful sale, but it also helps to build a strong relationship with the customer. A company that can demonstrate empathy for its customer's needs and provides solutions that fit into their daily lives is more likely to gain their loyalty and trust.
Buyer Persona Examples
Ok, now you are asking yourself: what can buyer personas be used for?
These fictional representations of your ideal customers can be used to create more effective marketing campaigns, tailor your messaging and offerings to their specific needs, and improve the overall customer experience.
Let’s say you own a pet store. You sell products for dogs and cats, but really you are catering to dog parents. Let’s take a look at the buyer personas that walk into your store or shop online.
Jasmine Rodriguez
PRO TIP
Understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of copywriting and content creation.
Buyer personas allow you to really get into the shoes of your target audience, but here’s a pro tip that will take your research to the next level.
Watch “Day in the life” videos! Either on Youtube, Instagram, or Tiktok, these platforms are filled with content from everyday people. They talk about their day and the tasks they need to accomplish and often give away so much valuable information about what it’s like to be them.
There are nuances and pieces of information that you can pick up and create copy and content around it. Don’t forget the comment section, it's a goldmine!
Feel Like This Is a Big Undertaking and You Need Help?
Understanding the role of your product or service in your customer’s life is where you will find the right approach to your content and create a successful and sustainable business strategy.