What is a Buyer Persona?

A Buyer Persona is a fictional character that marketers create through extensive and strategic research as to what your ideal customer is; they would analyze and ask things such as:

  • What problems does your persona face in their job?
  • What questions does your personal have about your industry that most tend to ask?
  • Who does your persona report to at their job?
  • What does your persona do for fun?
  • Does your persona have control over budget…and if so how much control?

Knowing the answers to these questions will give you a better picture into understanding your buyer persona and how to reach out to your ideal customer, what type of content they are looking for in order to create content with ease, offers like white papers, eBooks and more ultimately creating more lead conversions to those prequalified visitors that land on your web site.

In order to successfully sell your products and services, you need to know exactly who you are selling to. This is where the importance of crafting a buyer persona comes in. The more detailed and specific this persona is, the easier it will be to created highly targeted marketing that will appeal to them.

A buyer persona is, therefore, your perfect customer: a description of the specific type of client your products and services will appeal to. The more you know about them, the better, and so it’s always important that you ask yourself several key questions when detailing you ideal customer.

Common questions will include:

  • What their demographic information is – where do they live, are they married, how old are they, are they male or female, and so on.
  • What job they have – what industry are they in, how senior are they, etc.
  • What does a regular day look like – how long do they work, what is their commute, how to they get to work, what do they do in their spare time, etc.
  • What are their pain points – specifically, what problems do they have that your products and/or services solve?
  • What are their goals – what do they value most about your products: ease of use, speed of delivery, etc.
  • Where do they get information – are they looking online for info, are they reading magazines, do they get info from fiends and family?
  • What experience are they seeking – when they shop for your service or product, what are they looking for with regards to the sales experience, features of the product etc.
  • What are their objections – what are they likely to be concerned about when considering whether to buy your goods?

Crafting your persona

Only once you have run through all of these questions and considered all of the details of your perfect customer will you be in a position to craft your buyers persona. Sometimes you may be able to create several for different products you sell, or develop more in depth personas using more extensive information.

If you do this successfully, it will become a whole lot easier for you to talk directly to your target market through your website, copy, and marketing materials. In turn, this should help you to make more sales, and convert more prospects to buyers.