Buyer personas go beyond identifying customers as mere data points to understanding human behaviors that motivate buying decisions.
What are Buyer Personas?
Buyer Personas are fictional characters used to represent specific audience segments that interact with the brand. Typically, they are decision-makers or influencers in the purchase decision. Personas depict demographics, attitudes, values, and behaviors of these audience segments, draw from various resources to accurately portray the customer.
An audience persona is like taking a broad, distant view of a large group of people; a buyer persona zeros in to more personal insights based on attitudes and behaviors.
Understanding the buyer persona gives marketers a more integrated way to market their brand. In today’s world, a brand is more than simply what marketers say it is; it’s very much about what consumers think it is. So buyer personas, which go beyond mere data points, bring audiences to life in a very tangible, human way, providing more understanding of behaviors, patterns, needs, and wants.
Why are Buyer Personas Important to Your Business?
Buyer personas provide a sharper understanding of who the buyer is. They help delineate the consumer type, the human characteristics that reveal more insights into predictable behaviors.
Buyer personas can help organizations better understand their audiences which is critical to developing sustainable customer relationships. By humanizing the target audience, personas help in product development, allowing the creation of design solutions that better address the needs and preferences of all audience segments.
When buyer personas are included in creative briefs, for instance, it can help marketing teams develop a deeper sense of empathy for the target audience. This leads to more focused marketing campaigns that are relevant in concept, messaging and visual design — all of which will lead to better results.
Better digital experiences can result using buyer personas because, for instance, understanding how each persona prefers to navigate can make the difference in engagement. This also applies to apps, demos, mobile, social, and other branded digital experiences.
Sales teams can be empowered using buyer personas because it makes it easier for them to create a purchase path model. Personas can help anticipate objections and barriers to purchases, and organizations can also use personas for training based on these scenarios.
What are Some Different Types of Buyer Personas?
Decisive – If you’re selling to a decisive buyer, you should be decisive as well, and demonstrate willingness to take some risks on your end. Don’t worry too much about conflict — it doesn’t bother a decisive buyer. No approval by committee, please.
Collaborative – Collaboration is key so include the various buying influences and facilitate discussions to draw out thoughts, needs, and questions. It may take longer, but if a buy is going to happen it will be when the team is on board.
Outgoing – Keep technical details to a minimum and make sure to listen to shared ideas. This buyer persona weaves easily between talking about business and personal matters. When discussing ideas, don’t overdo being the realist; you might be seen as a downer.
Objective – Introspective and a critical thinker sums it up. No thanks on embellishments. It takes a while to develop trust with people, which can be great for you if you put in the time and effort. This persona prefers email to communicate. Don’t try to be too personal or friendly too fast.
Exacting – A comprehensive problem solver who examines from all the different angles. Provide the backup and data to help make the decision. Appropriate detail will be important. Take special care not to criticize as it might be taken personally. Once analysis is completed, buying decisions happen more easily.
Easy Going – Keep the creative talk active, but keep it moving forward recognizing new ideas presented. Spare the details and show how working with you will bring those new ideas into reality more easily.
How to Create Buyer Personas
You want to attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business who you’ll be more likely to retain over time, right?
You realize that having a deep understanding of your buyer personas is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.
Okay, so you get it. Buyer personas are really important to your business, but you’re wondering how to actually make one. No worries. Here’s the answer in this Free download. Get started today!