You change the way you speak depending on who you’re talking to, why you’re talking to them, and what you’re talking about. You speak with a child differently than an adult, different friends might get different deets, and you talk to your parents differently than your siblings. Everyone reacts to certain things differently. The same goes for your business.

Before creating your ads, emails, and website, you need to keep in mind who you are talking to and how you should approach them. You need to create a buyer persona.

Define who you are talking to, to know how to best communicate with them.

What is a Buyer Persona and Why is it Important?

A buyer persona is a research-based, semi-fictional character that characterizes your target customer. It is different from your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) – The ICP defines the companies that you want to target while the Buyer Persona describes the individual inside those companies.

Buyer personas must detail who your ideal customers are, what their life is like, what social platforms they are active on, what motivates them, and what their pain points are. It is normal to end up with more than one buyer persona if the decision to purchase involves multiple individuals. Each individual will fall under a separate persona. They will look at different criteria when evaluating your business and its products, and you will need different strategies to address each of their needs.

Know exactly what your ideal customer does, how he acts, what he likes/dislikes, and how to approach them. Create more effective messaging by gaining a deeper understanding of your customer. It will also help you develop your products to fulfill the needs of your ideal customer. The better you know your customers, the better you will be able to serve them. 

5 Steps to Create a Buyer Persona

Step 1: Research Your Buyers

The first step to create a buyer persona is to research your buyers. Start with your current client base. Identify age groups, job roles, gender, locations, role seniority, relationship status, familial status, pain points, and goals. Talk to your customer-facing employees who are in direct contact with your clients the most; they’ll be able to help you gain personable insights about your customers. Talk directly to your customers, either face-to-face or using other tools like surveys.

Think about who your ideal customers are. Who do you think would benefit most from your product? Are there certain people you are trying to convert but it isn’t working? Maybe your competitors are finding it easier to convert them. Check out what they are doing, maybe the content they are putting out. You can learn a lot by researching what competitors are doing, and how they are converting the customers you are aiming for. 

Figure out where you want to grow. Look at the clients you want to convert in the future. Research what your potential clients care about, what they are interested in, what their life is like, and what are some challenges they face. Lastly, look at your analytics. There isn’t better or more solid data than your analytics.

Study the analytics reports of your website, social media ads, and outreach campaigns.  Identify the demographic of people who are clicking on your ads and visiting your website. Pinpoint the pages they are visiting the most, and what sections they’re most interested in. Don’t forget to visit their social media profiles and validate the information you found. All this information will aid in helping you develop more relevant buyer personas. 

Step 2: Narrow Down Your Information.

Once you have collected all this information, the buyer persona creation process begins.

Figure out how many buyer personas you want to define. Then narrow down your results by picking out similar goals and challenges in your research. These similarities in what clients are looking for in your company will help you group potential clients into different sets of buyer personas. You can either segment buyer personas by industry, by job title, or both. If your company works with clients from various industries then it is smart to dedicate a buyer persona to each industry you serve. That is only relevant if each industry has different goals or pain points, but if your products help all the industries in the same way, then it makes no sense to separate them by industry just yet, segmenting by job title or position would benefit your interests more.

Most companies’ services are similar regardless of their client’s industries. Here at Hovi, we segment buyer personas based on job titles because we believe that a C-level client has different goals from a marketing manager or a sales leader. Most marketing managers have similar goals and challenges that they tend to face, and the same goes with other management level positions.

Step 3: Create Your Buyer Persona, Give it a Name and a Story.

Now that you’re done with the research, write down everything about a certain persona. Write down everything you think of, then later pull out the most important findings for your research. Start with giving your persona a name. Naming your persona will remind you that you’re talking to an actual person. You can even take it a step further and add a photo to represent your buyer persona. Then follow that by writing down their age range, job title, where they’re located, hobbies, marital status, career goals, preferred social media platforms, and what their driving factors are. Make sure to answer all these questions. Also, make sure to know what their goals and motivations are. The better you understand what they want, the better you will be able to empathize with them.

Get creative with your personas. Create a story to paint a full picture of who the persona is. The more context you have the easier the next steps will be.

Step 4: Keep The Roles, Goals, And Challenges in Mind

Now that you have a narrative in front of you, you can get started. Pull out the most relevant parts: the ones you can act on. That information falls under three categories: Roles, Goals, and Challenges. 

Let’s start with roles. This is content related to their job titles and role at work, in addition to their role at home. Are they the CEO, a manager, or maybe a marketing representative? Are they easily triggered, a parent, sociable? This information allows you to have a deeper understanding of what they are good at. Also, if you know what a person does, and what role they play, you are able to create more relevant content that speaks to them.

Knowing your buyer persona’s goals is key to offering them personalized content. Once you know what their goals are you can create content and sales services that will actually help them. Your buyer persona’s main goal might be to increase productivity, or have full visibility on the business, or maybe to move up the company. When your marketing and sales team understands what the persona is trying to achieve, it makes it much easier to modify their strategies in a way to fit with the persona. 

What are your buyer persona’s challenges? Knowing your buyer’s persona’s pain points is crucial. When you know what your buyer’s pain points are, you will be able to work on solving them. What is making it difficult for them to reach their goals? Whatever it may be, deliver a solution for it. Grab their attention by mentioning the challenge they are facing, then present the solutions you have for them.

Step 5: Use the information you collected and tailor your marketing and sales strategies according to your personas. 

Make sure your personas are easily accessible by your team and put somewhere everyone can easily access them. Also, assure that your sales and marketing teams are familiar with each persona. Create content that speaks to your buyer persona’s pain points and ad campaigns tailored to grab their attention. Optimize your landing pages to speak to your buyer personas. 

Create a Buyer persona to pave the way towards understanding your most qualified prospects’ life. You can use this information to benefit them and yourself. Use these personas to create content that will grab their attention and pushes them to engage with you.

At Hovi, we’ll drill down and capture all the data you’ll need to create your buyer personas and help you setup your outreach based on those personas. If you’re looking to ramp up your conversions and start pushing more qualified leads through your funnel, let’s talk!