What are buyer personas? Learn how these profiles can help you target better leads, create stronger customer relationships, and increase your sales revenue.
If you're starting your first sales campaign, and you haven't learned how to create a buyer persona, there's a chance that you'll have trouble reaching your target audience. Of course, when you don't reach your target audience, you don't make sales, and when you don't make sales, your company doesn't earn revenue.
So, what are buyer personas? Let's take a closer look.
Buyer personas are fictional profiles that businesses create to help better understand their target customers. They might include details like age, gender, geographic location, job title, income, education level, family life, hobbies, interests, goals, values, fears, and pain points.
All of these characteristics can provide deeper insight into a specific demographic and how to reach them. For example, if you're marketing to Baby Boomers, you won't typically use the same messaging as you would to reach Gen Z, so knowing your target customer's age is important. Income tells you how much disposable income someone might have. If you're selling luxury items, you're more likely to target someone who makes $200,000 a year rather than someone who makes $40,000. Goals and pain points are especially important because they can help you determine if your product or service is a good fit for a person and how you can help them realize that. .
Buyer personas are typically generated based on marketing research, and they can be used in sales, marketing, product development and other departments responsible for finding ways to reach and appeal to customers.
In sales specifically, having buyer personas can provide insight into which leads your team should focus on, as well as how to create targeted messaging for those leads. They can also help you come up with strategies for nurturing prospects, building stronger relationships and keeping prospects engaged, creating engaging content, and overcoming barriers and objections. They can even help you identify which channels to use to reach potential customers.
When your entire company uses the same buyer personas, you can ensure your sales team is aligned with marketing and other departments. As a matter of fact, working together with other departments can help you create a robust and well-rounded buyer persona that combines information and input from all points of view.
Buyer personas are excellent tools for gaining insights and reaching the right customers, but there are some common misconceptions about them floating around. For example, some companies assume that once they create a buyer persona, that's their customer profile for a lifetime. The truth is that everything eventually changes due to influences like market fluctuations, technology, product features, and consumer preferences. It's important to reevaluate your buyer persona regularly and make updates as needed.
Other common misconceptions about buyer personas include:
The exact number of steps involved in creating a buyer persona often vary, depending on who is explaining them. In this guide, we've broken the process down into four essential steps that will help you create the most effective buyer personas for your business.
To create a solid buyer persona, your process should always start with market research. Don't shy away from using multiple sources.. More insights often means creating a more comprehensive profile. Resources you can use often include:
Once you've compiled your research, it's time to start looking for demographic and psychographic patterns.
Demographics tell you who your buyers are. You might notice themes in areas like age, gender, income, occupation, or marital or family status. For example, you may note that many of your customers fall between the ages of 30 to 45, which means your buy persona is likely a Millennial. Or you might notice that your products appeal to men who make at least $100,000 a year, so they might have a little disposable income and are willing to pay more for a high-quality product.
Psychographics tell you why your customers do what they do. This might include personality traits, like whether they're an introvert or extrovert. It can include hobbies, interests, values, opinions, lifestyle choices, and beliefs. You might discover a theme, like that your customers are concerned about the environment and determine that your persona prefers products and services that are Earth-friendly. This could help you create more targeted messaging by mentioning that your company uses recyclable materials when interacting with your leads.
Once you have a better understanding of your persona's demographics and psychographics, you can match those characteristics to your customers' pain points. What problems are they trying to solve, and what's preventing them from solving them? Perhaps your buyer persona is a new parent between the ages of 25 and 45 who doesn't have enough time in the day to accomplish all of their tasks. You want to sell your meal kit subscription service to them to help take the guesswork out of dinner. Analyzing and matching these pain points gives you a clearer idea of how to reach this segment of customers and how to engage them.
Once you've completed the first three steps, it's time to compile your finding and create your actual buyer persona. Create a template and fill in the details. List their demographics, psychographics, pain points, behaviors, and the steps of their buying journey. Don't be afraid to use real-life quotes and information provided from your actual customers to round out the profile.
Once it's complete, share it with your team. Help them understand the reasoning behind creating this specific persona and why they're important to your business. Discuss it and ask for input. And remember that this information will likely change over time, so it's important to repeat these steps regularly.
While the general process is the same for most companies, you may have to experiment a little before you find the right path to creating your own profile. For example, some companies might rely heavily on social media interactions, while others get more relevant info from interviews and focus groups. Either way, it's important to avoid some common mistakes that can actually hurt your process.
Some sales teams make the mistake of assuming they can put together a buyer persona based on their own assumptions, opinions, stereotypes, and experiences. This can limit your entire process and ultimately, prevent you from making sales. Instead, it's important to use verified data to create a strong foundation for the profile that will ultimately help you target the right leads.
The more details you can add to your persona the better, though you don't want to compromise quality for quantity. Try to make your persona as specific as possible when narrowing down its demographics, psychographics, pain points, and other characteristics. The more specific your buyer persona is, the more value you'll find in it and the more actionable it can be. Remember you can always make adjustments as needed.
Using a buyer persona for sales can help you find high-quality leads. It can also help you create more targeted messaging, engage your leads better, and overcome barriers you might typically encounter during your sales process. Creating buyer personas requires taking a deep dive into your market research, but the results are almost always worth it and can help secure future growth..
For personalized assistance and expert guidance on mastering buyer personas, contact RevOptics today.
