A buyer persona, also known as a buyer profile, is a symbolic representation of the characteristics that a potential client should have or has. It is a term that is frequently used in e-books and digital marketing workshops because it is part of a new practice in the world of online sales: inbound marketing.
This marketing methodology has had a powerful impact on companies’ digital strategies, since it focuses mainly on detecting customer needs, with the aim of knowing in depth what people want and how to satisfy them. In this sense, Some inbound marketing specialists define a buyer persona as a complete description of an ideal buyer, based on real data from your current customers and market research.
It should be noted that each company must have one or more buyer personas associated with a product or service. That is, depending on the type of business, they may have one or more buyer profiles. The main question that companies should ask themselves to build a buyer persona is: What characteristics should a buyer have that feels attracted to my brand?
Being certain about the characteristics of your products and/services, in terms of quality and advantages, is very important. However, let us remember that for inbound marketing the focus is on customers, therefore, knowing their needs, motivations and desires is vital in this process. It’s about selling the right products and/or services to the right people.
What is the purpose of creating a buyer persona?
Know how the people you want to attract think:
A buyer persona serves to understand in depth how the mentality of a company’s potential customers works. This more accurately allows organizations to know what type of content to create, in what style to do it, and in what format it is best to publish it. Per see, It works as an essential tool to take advantage of the process of creating and distributing a particular content.
Establish a common language:
Creating a buyer persona also serves to understand what language potential clients use to communicate with each other and with the people around them. This is of utmost importance to create key messages that connect emotionally and professionally with clients.
Create useful and relevant content:
Creating valuable content (one of the basic principles of inbound marketing) for your potential clients is much easier when you create a buyer persona. A buyer profile also serves to know which platforms are most used by people, What blogs do you visit regularly, what information do you like to read, what are your interests, etc.
Buyers persona vs target audience
Companies that want to determine their target audience usually do so based on macro characteristics that allow them to create patterns and statistics, for example: sex, geographic location, age, socioeconomic stratum, etc. For example, the Lean Canva methodology to refer to its target audience, they talk about customer segments but always giving very general data about them.
On the other hand, a buyer persona is a very detailed descriptive profile of a person with interests similar to those of your company. In fact, the variables to create a buyer persona are tied to the company’s value proposition. The objective is not to generalize, but to be very detailed with the qualities that a potential buyer should have. While in a target audience, there may be many buyers.
On the other hand, the target is another term that can generate confusion between what a buyer persona truly is. The target, like the objective audience, is based on people with broad characteristics but trying to cover a more specific number of people based on a percentage.
To understand what exactly the target is and its difference from the buyer persona, let’s look at the following example:
Ensalana is a home product designed to facilitate the preparation of fruit and/or vegetable salads. Its design is configured to chop various vegetables simultaneously, in just 60 seconds. Ensalana’s target audience is middle-class mothers who reside in Greater Caracas and are actively working.
- Total population of Caracas according to the 2011 CENSUS: 2,245,744 people
- Population of Venezuelan women from Caracas: 1,122,872 (50.3% of the population noted above)
- Population of Venezuelan women who work: 449,148 (40% of the previous population)
- Population of Venezuelan women belonging to the middle class: 224,574 (50.3% of the previous population)
In this sense, Ensalana’s target covers 224,574 women. Unlike the buyer persona who focuses more on tastes, needs and lifestyle. In this sense, the buyer persona must be a much smaller number than the target, of women with good eating habits, who cook at home, who have little time and who are looking for a practical solution.
How to successfully define a buyer persona?
Creating a buyer profile requires classifying in detail key characteristics that can give you clues about behaviors, motivations, problems, needs, possible solutions, gaps in the market, etc.
To successfully define a buyer persona, establish key questions that find the data you really want to obtain. Hubspot, a pioneer company in entering inbound marketing into the digital world, suggests establishing the following characteristics in a buyer profile:
- Name and surname:
- General profile: Work, work history, family
- Demographic information: age, salary, location, sex
- Identifiers: treatment, personality, communication
- Objectives: Primary and secondary objectives
- Challenges: Primary and secondary challenges
- How we can help you achieve your desired goals: so you can overcome your challenges
- Feedback: Examples of real feedback about your challenges and goals
- Common complaints: Reasons why the person would not buy your product or service
- Marketing message: How would you describe your company’s solution to this buyer persona?
- Sales message: How would you sell the solution to your buyer persona?
How do you obtain the data to create a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is created from all the information that companies can collect or have at their disposal, in relation to their clients and potential buyers.
In other words, It should be taken into account both people who have already purchased and are in a database, as well as people who have never made a purchase but who, in the same way, are related to the value proposition of the company and can provide important data. In this sense, creating a buyer persona requires several techniques, some of the most important are:
- Focus group: Focus groups are face-to-face meetings, in which there is a moderator and no more than 10 people, talking about the topics established in the previous question. This meeting cannot exceed one hour and there must be a person who documents the activity, either orally (recordings) or textually (writing). These data are then averaged and a semi-fictitious profile is created that integrates these data.
- Internal data: When companies often make phone calls to communicate with their customers, they obtain important data about them. Whether in your previous research or during the conversation with the client, the goal will always be to generate personalized language and obtain valuable information.
- Forms: The forms that are indexed on the landing pages are essential tools to discover what types of buyers are relating to a particular content, product and/or service of your company. Visitors who fill out the forms with their personal data to continue acquiring benefits on the website will help you build your ideal customer archetype quickly and effectively.
- Market studies: For the authors, Kotler, Bloom and Hayes, a market study “consists of systematically gathering, planning, analyzing and communicating data relevant to the specific market situation facing an organization. These studies are applied to carry out a marketing campaign and previously analyze the scenario where it will be executed. Here, important data is obtained about the potential customers that you want to attract with the campaign.
To create a buyer persona, inbound marketing specialists interview clients of companies or people who meet the necessary characteristics to become clients.
A buyer persona constitutes an essential element within inbound marketing and is a fundamental practice when creating ideal content for your potential clients. If you understand your buyer persona, you will know how to sell to them, which will allow you to have great sales opportunities.
