How to Construct Buyer Personas

Buyer Personas

When it comes to creating Buyer Personas, the first thing you have to ask yourself is “How well do you really know your target audience?”

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the people you are trying to sell your products or services to

Personas help your marketing department and your sales team equally. Once you have internalised the target audience for your business, it will run more efficiently.

Buyer personas help you:

• Create focused content
• Improve/develop products and services
• Increase the effectiveness of your sales follow-up
• Streamline effective customer service.

So buyer personas are extremely important to all businesses that want to find customers and keep them! Creating these personas becomes even more critical in the digital marketing world. A world where we attract many customers without ever meeting them.

Buyer Personas are not challenging to create. However, you do need to know the right questions to ask the right people at the right time. That’s not asking too much really!

Why You Need To Create Good Buyer Personas

Most business owners would like to know their customers and potential customers better. By gaining this understanding, you can begin to tailor messages that speak to your target audience directly.

I have seen many businesses request a target audience overview, or target market analysis only to receive it and then discard it days later. Often, this oversight is due to a lack of imagery an analysis provides. Buyer Personas coupled with storyboards give you that imagery.

The best buyer personas are based on fact and well as insights that you have gathered in your business. They should conjure images of people that you can see in your mind.

Depending on your business you may need to create one or two personas to inform your team, or you may need to create 20 different personas. As long as each persona provides valuable insights for your marketing, sales, and service team the process is worth it.

Negative Buyer Personas

If the buyer personas that you have created help you target your messages to the people who want to buy your product, then a negative buyer persona is the person you don’t want to target. These types of buyer personas are equally important because they help you exclude people from your messaging.

There can be any number of negative buyer personas for your business, depending on what it is. For example, students who use your content for research purposes or leads who are too expensive to convert because of a low average sale price.

Creating negative buyer personas can help your marketing and sales team because they help segment out the “bad apples” and give you more time to focus your energy on converting leads that cost less to acquire and bring positive sales conversions.

Practical Methods For Creating Buyer Personas

Remember when I said that buyer personas are not challenging to create and generally come from facts and insights that you have gained? Well, here are some practical ways for you to find information to start building a fantastic storyboard for your buyer personas:

1. Look for buying trends in your current customer database
2. Use forms on your website to capture valuable information
3. Talk to your sales team
4. Interview customers and prospects – you can achieve this using digital surveys or good old-fashioned conversation
5. Analytics from Facebook and Google

For each business, the information you need to create solid and valuable buyer personas will be different. A good rule of thumb to follow is to source information from 3-5 different resources, whether that be current customers, prospective customers, or your website.

Whichever source(s) you choose to use to create your buyer personas use the following questions to guide your storyboard creation.

20 Questions to Create B2B Buyer Personas

You should create a storyboard of each buyer persona that answers questions about their:

Role

1. What is your job role? Your title?
2. How is your job success measured?
3. What does a work day look like for you?
4. What skills do you require to complete your job well?
5. Are there any tools that you use in your job? Is any special knowledge required to perform your job?
6. Do you have any direct reports? Who do you report to?

Company

1. What industry/industries does your business work in?
2. Size of your company regarding people and revenue?

Watering Holes

Publications where you drink in information

1. How do you gain new knowledge for your role? Do you complete professional development?
2. What do you read to keep informed?
3. Do you participate in any professional associations? Do you use social media to gain insight into your role?

Goals

1. What are your responsibilities?
2. What does it mean to be successful in your role?

Challenges

1. What are your most significant challenges?

Personal Background

1. Personal Demographics (if appropriate, ask their age, marital status and if they have children).
2. Educational Background. What is the highest level of education you completed, and What did you study?

Shopping Preferences

1. What path did you take to get into your role?
2. What is your preferred method of buying? (email, conversation, social media)
3. Do you conduct research online before you commit to buy something?
4. How do you search for information? What is your process?
5. Thinking about your last purchase what considerations did you make, and why did you choose to buy that product or service?

20 Questions to Create B2C Buyer Personas

You should create a storyboard of each buyer persona that answers questions about their:

Demographics

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Marital Status
4. #/Age of Children
5. Location
6. Occupation
7. Education

Watering Holes

Publications where you drink in information

1. Where do you gain information about new products and services?
   • Google Search
   • Social Media – through groups, search, advertisements
2. What further process do you use to gather information?

Values

1. What drives you to make decisions in life?
2. Where do your motivations come from?

Challenges

1. In relation to your category what are your most significant pain points and challenges?
2. What keeps you awake at night?

Objections

1. What objections to this product did/do you have?
2. What is your role in the purchase process?

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More Resources

If you are looking for more articles to read about target markets, market segmentation or customer needs start here:

• Do you really understand your target market?
• Have you correctly identified your ideal target market?
• Sharpen your focus with market segmentation analysis
• Customer needs analysis – Part 1
• Customer Needs Analysis – Part 2

Or speak to one our friendly marketing consultants at Baker Marketing and get expert help in creating your buyer personas. Start targeting your messages and content to the right target audience today! Call 8352 3091 and speak to your dedicated marketing consultant.