The internet has made it easier, and also harder to market to your customers. Buyer behaviour is changing, and as a marketer it can be difficult to know how to reach your potential customers with the right message. Yes it might be easier because you can now reach them online but how do you stand out from all the noise, and how do you stand out from the competition?
The answer is understanding your buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a description of a person, who represents a group of people who buys from you. This description should provide insight into how they buy, why they buy, what’s important to them and who they are.
Your business may have several different buyer personas, even if you only have one product, different groups of people may buy from you for different reasons. The purpose of creating buyer personas is to improve your marketing and your customers’ experience – so its important to not get lost in too much detail and make it more complicated, than helpful. The recommendation is to start with one persona and once you get that correct start building out your other buyer personas.
Getting Started With Creating Your First Buyer Persona
Your buyer persona is a fictional character who represents a buyer category, they should have a name and picture to identify them. The more you know about your persona the better your marketing will be.
As a first step, look at your existing customer base and group them based on their reasons for why they buy from you. You might look at age, job title or location. For example if you are a Financial Adviser you may sell the same product, and process to all your clients but their needs are different. Someone in their 60s and closer to retirement has a different need than someone in their 20s. Their need and painpoint is completely different and to be successful at marketing you need to connect with your potential buyers on an emotional level, which means providing a solution to their need or painpoint. Here are 3 examples, the first one is generic and not targeted to any buyer persona, the second one is targeted to an older group and the third a younger group. With the last two you can see how the message is related to who they are, and aligned with what their need is.
- Talk to a financial adviser today about the right investments for you.
- If you are planning retirement and want to make sure you have enough to live on talk to a financial adviser today.
- Are you in your 20s, just started working and want to save more without compromising your lifestyle? Talk to a financial adviser today.
So how do you start?
Create a list of questions and start by asking your existing customers. In addition to asking demographic information ask questions that will give you an insight into why they decided they need your product or service, what was their process in talking to different service providers, what was important to them when choosing a service provider and why did they choose you.
In addition to talking to existing customers, also talk to your sales people – the people who are the ones talking to customers during the sales process to gain this insight.
How do you use your buyer persona insight?
By understanding what’s important to your customers, the words they use to describe their need or painpoint, you can then begin to use this information in your marketing messages. Use the words they use – not your words or industry jargon. Communicate their need or painpoint in your marketing messages. Describe who they are in your marketing.
Why is understanding your buyer personas so important?
There is so much information competing for your buyers’ attention. So how do you stand out? Have a very focused message so your buyers know its them you’re targeting. Using the words they use in your marketing will get their attention. Even if your product or service provides a solution for a wide range of people if you try to target all of them with one message you risk it not resonating with anyone. So you’re better to come up with several different messages for each of the buyer personas you have identified.
I hope you have found this article helpful in understanding why you should create buyer persons and then how to use this insight to improve your marketing results.
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