Learn the basics of buyer personas so you can create better products and services.

What is a buyer persona?

When you first started out as an entrepreneur, you knew exactly what type of product or service you wanted to offer. You also probably thought about the type of customer you were going to sell your products and services to. That customer – the one you thought about in your head – is a buyer persona.

But a buyer persona is much more thought out and detailed. He or she has a name (yes, a buyer persona can have a gender), an ethnicity, family characteristics, shopping habits, likes and dislikes, goals, and other characteristics that make up the persona. You can even create an image of what your buyer persona looks like.

In simple terms, “a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

You can have one or several buyer personas that represent your customer base. Your customers may change over time, so it’s normal to have to update your personas as needed.

Buyer personas don’t always have to be potential customers. They can also be representations of the people you don’t want to sell to.

Why do I need a buyer persona for my small business?

Creating buyer personas can take hours of research and writing. Why spend precious time creating fictional characters?

When it comes to marketing, you never want to blindly market a product without knowing exactly who you’re marketing to. Essentially, buyer personas help you understand specific thoughts, opinions, and behaviors of your customers so you can provide them with products that precisely fit their needs.

Successful businesses develop detailed buyer personas and then create products that address specific pain points. For example, a natural hair care company may create plastic-free packaging after learning that their customers care about the planet and prefer eco-friendly products. The company will have learned this after researching their customer base and learning more about them through buyer personas.

After conducting research and observing buying and behavior patterns, you can also create characters with specific characteristics and opinions that’ll help influence the types of products you create.

How to create a buyer persona

So how does one gather information to create a buyer persona? Even though your personas are fake, you want real data to make the most authentic persona. You can get this data through research, surveys, interviews, and customer interactions.

Research

Start by analyzing your current customers. What do you already know about them? Do you know their age, location, income level, and family makeup? 

State, city, and county websites are good resources to find demographics, annual salary, political affiliations, and so on.

You can also browse Facebook, Instagram, and other social sites to see what types of content or interests your customers have. For example, after analyzing 100 of your customers’ Facebook profiles, you also learn that they like a particular celebrity or organization. You can incorporate this information into your buyer persona. If their accounts are public, you can access this information.

Lastly, browse articles on Statista and other data-reporting websites to learn about shopping behavior and other marketing trends.

Surveys

If you don’t know much about your customers, then you may want to create surveys for them to complete. You can create a survey and then send it to your current email list. Or, you can create a post-shopping survey for customers who completed an order. In the survey, you can ask about family size, age, annual income, and education level.

Interviews

Interviews are more detailed than surveys and provide more accurate information. You can ask your current customers to participate in interviews. An incentive to participate will probably entice them to cooperate, as interviews can sometimes be hard to secure. Some businesses have posted interview requests on a public platform, such as Craigslist or Facebook with success. This blog has a list of good questions to ask during a persona interview.

Customer communication

Reviews, comments, and customer support requests also reveal important information about your customers that you can include in your buyer personas. Take some time to review these and then compile a document on your observations. Do customers have a common complaint? Do they mention anything about their personal or social life? These are some questions to keep in mind.

Time to Build Your Personas

Once you gather enough information, you can start building your buyer personas. You can find buyer persona templates online and use them to flesh out your characters.

Each buyer persona should have:

• Age
• Challenges
• Location
• Languages
• Spending habits
• Hobbies and interests
• Life stage (pregnant, parents, engaged, retired, etc.)

Feel free to add additional characteristics as well. The more detailed you can get, the better.

As you can see, buyer personas take time to develop. The social marketing experts at Write Magical are always here to help – whether you need help developing surveys or writing your buyer personas. Reach out to us today to learn how we can step in.