What is a persona?
A persona is a semi-fictional character you create in order to visualize your ideal customer. This way, you are able to better market to them. The end goal is to get your product in front of your ideal customer and ultimately increase sales.
Why Use a Buyer Persona?
I know it seems a little silly to create a fictional character but believe me — all the major companies do this in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the person they want to be buying their items.
Having a buyer persona helps to understand your ideal customer, separating them from all of the other types of people who currently purchase your product.
By targeting your ideal customer, you can get a better idea of where to reach them: What do they read? What do they watch? Where do they shop? By knowing the answers to these questions, you have a good idea of where to advertise to them.
What are the struggles and challenges of your ideal customer? What are their goals, morals, talents & beliefs? By understanding your ideal customer, you can speak to them in a voice they understand, and in a tone, they can relate to and tighten the bond between them and your brand.
Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. You can use them to inform everything from writing more effective copy to developing better products.
How Do I Create a Buyer Persona?
1) Real Data.
Begin by going through the data of your current customer base and seeing what trends you find. Are there more customers in a certain age bracket? Are there more customers in a certain geographic location or climate?
Mine this data into clues for creating your buyer persona.
2) Research.
There are many ways to research your ideal customer. Most importantly: Interviews.
- Interview current customers
- Get referrals from your customers and interview people like them who have not yet purchased your product.
- Reach out to new prospects by hiring an agency to find them and conduct more research. How Do I Use a Buyer Persona?
- Overall Branding: Begin to align your brand, targeting your Buyer Persona.
- Marketing Copy: Change marketing copy and landing pages to speak directly to your Buyer Persona.
- Advertising: Re-allocate advertising dollars to focus on channels your Buyer Persona uses.
- Email Marketing: Segment your email database and send laser-focused messages to those contacts who fit your Buyer Persona.
- Social Media: Rearrange your social media personality to speak directly to your Buyer Persona. Creating a Buyer Persona for your brand can be a lot of fun but it can also be overwhelming to business owners with a lot on their plate. Let us lead the process for you or take the project over completely. This is one of our core competencies and we can make this process seamless for you and very rewarding. Call now or message us for a free consultation.