Don't Waste Time Attracting The Wrong People: The Importance of a Target Buyer Persona
There are many terms within marketing and communications that symbolize best practices. However, these terms can seem daunting and very technical, especially for business owners that wear many hats in their business.
Target Buyer Personas Explained
The purpose of a target buyer persona is to create clarity for your business, product, and marketing campaigns so that you can operate with your ideal customer always in mind.
A target buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer which highlights the key behaviours, needs, and concerns of your customers as a single individual. By consolidating these top-level characteristics of your ideal customer, you can more easily tailor content and your products to those who are most likely to purchase.
Benefits of Developing a Target Buyer Persona
Taking just a little bit of time to develop a target buyer persona can have lasting benefits that pay dividends for the amount of time you spend initially developing one. A marketing campaign that is driven by a target buyer persona is always the most effective way to advertise your business. To be more specific, the benefits that your business will experience as a result of marketing to a target buyer persona include:
- Easily and continuously create targeted marketing campaigns
- Get to know where your customers spend time to better access them with your messaging
- Cater your content to those individuals that want to hear your message the most
- Higher quality leads and less time spent qualifying leads that aren’t interested
- Better product development, both in the efficiency and quality of your end product
Now that you know why you should create a target buyer persona, let’s dive into developing your target buyer persona.
Creating a Target Buyer Persona
It may sound overwhelming, but developing a buyer persona can be both interesting and straightforward.
The first step? Research. Buyer persona research is key to developing your own buyer persona. Some methods of researching your target buyers include the following:
- Interview your customer, even if informally. If this option is not available to you, ask your most customer-facing representatives to provide insights based on their interactions with customers.
- Go even deeper with your sales team. Ask questions regarding the types of sales cycles that work for your team and the ideal customers, as well as what generalizations your team can make about the different types of customers you serve best and most.
- Create surveys and forms using your website, sales funnel, and social media to answer your most pressing questions.
Once you’ve done your research (we recommend creating a document with all your findings), it’s time to develop your target buyer persona. Here are some areas of your customers’ habits and needs that you can start with before tailoring to your business:
- Background: Career path, job, education level, marital status
- Demographics: age, socioeconomic status, location
- Identifiers: shopping behaviours, communication preferences
Now that you know your target buyer persona, create goals, a sales system, and a marketing campaign that is catered to your newly developed target buyer persona.
Got Questions?
A target buyer persona will help your company stay on track and get the right leads for your company. For more information about target personas and how to create one contact WEB ROI.
