Spend Less & Earn More By Creating Your Perfect Customer Avatar
When was the last time you consciously thought about a 'buyer persona'? If the answer is anything other than 'never,' then congratulations; you've just taken the first step on your road to marketing enlightenment.
If buyer personas are new to you, or if you're still fuzzy on what they are and why they're so important, then buckle up – we're about to enter into some seriously nerdy territory. But trust me – it's worth it. Because once you understand who your buyers are (and, more importantly, what motivates them), you can start creating content that actually converts them into customers. And that's where the real magic happens…
What are buyer personas?
The Buyer Persona is a character that helps you in creating content for your ideal customer. They have traits specific to them, which makes the personas an abstract representation of what customers might want or need from products you sell. Buyers persona's allow businesses to tailor their advertising so it directly speaks towards someone with similar interests and preferences as those who will buy company’s goods/services
Who uses buyer personas?
Marketing teams use buyer personas to better understand their customer's needs and provide tailored content. This helps the business development teams of these companies tailor products and services, increasing sales as well! The power of personas makes targeting campaigns toward specific groups easier. Since you are crafting your presentation based on these tailored profiles, they become aware and engaged with what's happening right away. Their needs will be met just as they like it!
Remember, you can't fake it. If you know one's persona, they'll sense it, and if not-they're also conscious of this fact!
Why should you create a buyer persona?
By defining a buyer persona, you can build a more accurate picture of your customers. You can find out who your customers are and what they want. Knowing the right questions will help significantly improve sales. Not everyone is looking for something new; some people may be more likely than others! You'll also get better content that caters directly toward these individuals, so it has higher chances of being read by them - which means increased conversion rates too.
How do you create the perfect buyer persona?
Why not start with a bit of research? The first step in creating your detailed buyer persona is to gather the information you need.
You will want to know the following:
- Demographics
- Psychological needs that your product or service satisfies
- Pain points (which might cause them to buy your product)
- Goals (what they hope to achieve by buying your product)
- Values (how important each aspect is to their purchase decision)
As soon as you've gathered this data, you'll want to create a personal profile for this individual. The more information you have about your customers, the better. That's why it is essential to profile them and understand what makes them tick so that their needs can be met with content tailored just for those interests!
Example of a Business Scenario
Imagine you're a marketer at a company that specializes in shoes.
You've been tasked with helping launch a new line of women's pumps, and the CEO has already gone on record saying he expects them to sell like hotcakes.
Your team, however, has noticed something odd in your analytics reports: around 70% of your web traffic appears to be women, but only about 20% of those visitors convert to a sale.
Even your most loyal customers don't seem interested in the new pumps, to make matters worse. In fact, almost none of them have visited the shoe section lately.
In this case, there's a good chance that most of the women visiting your site aren't actually interested in buying new shoes. It's still possible that some of them are willing to buy shoes if they're marketed to them appropriately.
And suppose you could figure out which women were most likely to be interested in buying pumps. In that case, you could target your marketing efforts accordingly and improve your conversion rate.
That's where profiles of buyer personas come in handy.
You decided to create a buyer persona for this situation. Let's call her Jane.
Jane might be in her mid-30s, married, and has two children under 5.
She works part-time as a dental assistant at a local practice.
Still, She is thinking about going back to school to become an accountant.
Jane is on a tight budget, but she'd like to own at least one pair of nice shoes. She's not really looking for everyday wear -- just something stylish that will help her feel confident during tax season.
When Jane visited your site, she probably went right to the clearance shoe section. If you could have identified that she was in the market for pumps, you might have directed her to a marketing page that showed off your new line.
Instead, Jane probably just went straight back to her inbox because she wasn't interested in browsing pumps or any other shoes.
If marketers had used buyer persona data, they'd know there's very little chance of selling Jane on pumps. Maybe a sale on flats would have been more successful.
With this new knowledge, the marketer can craft individual landing pages for each shoe category to increase their chances of getting Jane to click through and sign up.
That way, if someone who fit Jane's profile visited the site in the future, they would automatically be presented with advertisements for flats.
Just knowing that not all women are interested in pumps and marketing accordingly could have meant the difference between success or failure for that campaign. Simple and effective? You bet!
Writer's note
Thanks for reading my blog post about buyer personas! It was such a joy to write, and I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions or concerns regarding the content here at 2099-we're all about helping each other stay classy up in this neck of woods!