Are you in the business for a long time but unable to create a buyer persona? The first question in the place is why do we need a buyer persona. There are many businesses that simply fail because they do not know what is working for them, what is not. This indicates that they are unaware of the concept of a buyer persona or have failed to create it.

On the other hand, there are businesses that run for several years who do not have created any buyer persona but enjoying success. May be they simply do not know what a buyer persona is or what exactly it means! Of course, they are not stabbing in the dark. They do follow some unknown strategy similar to buyer persona. And, that concentration of marketing efforts ensure long life cycle of their business.

So the question arises, do we really need a buyer persona? Is there any positive correlation between a well researched buyer persona and sustainability of your business?

Buyer persona matters or not?

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer.

It is based on the already available information about your existing customers with further addition of market research. For example, if you are in the business of selling diaper bags, you know that your existing customers are new moms or moms of toddlers to kindergarten kids.

But, if you prepare your buyer persona you would also know that your customer segment is vast. And, it can include expecting moms, expecting dads or mothers, friends and relatives of expecting moms. So yes, it does matter to know who you are offering your products and services.

• It helps content marketers to create a copy in accordance with their precise target audience.
• It helps digital marketers to run organic and paid campaigns that gives better conversion rates.
• And, it helps sales team to convert the leads.

Let’s dig deep into the buyer persona facts.

Buyer persona facts every content marketer should know (but they do not)

In a single word definition, buyer persona means the target audience.

Digital marketers and content marketers keep talking about reaching their target audience. But how do they reach? Well, they can only reach them if their marketing message is correlating with their needs and addressing their requirements. Besides this, there are many other buyer persona facts that you will learn now.

Fact-1 : Boosts coordination of sales and marketing team

Often we have heard that the sales and marketing departments are enemies in arms. But, let me tell you they are not.

With a perfect buyer persona, both sales and marketing departments can be brothers in arms.

If both teams know their target audience, it will help them synchronize their efforts. The marketing team brings prospects to the website and the sales team converts those prospects into customers. But imagine a situation wherein prospect comes to your website with a specific requirement which your sales team can’t fulfill.

For example, the message sent by the marketing team is “buy bridal wear of your choice online”. And when the prospect visits your website, s/he fails to place order only because it has no option to pay through Google Pay / Apple Pay. Here, if you have a well-researched buyer persona, you would know that the target audience mostly pays through Google Pay / Apple Pay. This is how a buyer persona improves our sales pitch, our customer services and over a period of time our offerings.

Tip: A content marketer in coordination with the sales team make a great resource to build buyer personas. The sales teams are on the front lines and hear firsthand their goals, desires, frustrations, etc. so they can perfectly educate and guide a content marketer with buyer persona facts.

Fact-2 : Help you understand your own product

When you understand the buyer persona, you, in a way, understand the requirements of your target audience. If you are in the business of selling plastic bottles, you will know what kind of size people usually prefer. What kind of inquiries do you receive from website visitors or on social platforms? Is their requirement is of less than 200 ml, 500 ml, or more than 1 liter of capacity? Accordingly, you can line up your production activities, tailor your advertisement content and maintain stock levels.

Tip: If you don’t have many customers yet, look at the customers of your competitors to improve and strengthen your product.

If you are a seasoned product manager, you, most probably know in and out your personas. But, if you are new in business, you definitely struggle for it. Most of the times, newbie marketers end up marketing their product considering user persona, and gives zilch attention to buyer persona.

For example, who’s the customer for a children’s bicycle? Is it the child riding a bicycle or the parent? True that, a child will be the bicycle rider. Which means we can think of the child as the user persona for the bicycle, the parent will be the buyer persona. So, you can advertise features of bicycle which can push parents to buy. Sounds easy to create marketing campaigns now?

Fact-3 : Builds your business with data-driven research

We just talked about user personas and buyer personas. Let’s continue the same example. By now you know that the marketing of your product (bicycle) will be addressed to the parents, and not the kids who are going to be end-users.

Here, for one product, there are TWO distinct personas, which requires varied marketing strategies. Your product is something that appeals to both and hence do marketing for both. But, to ensure sales, a content marketer can set priority only when s/he knows who is going to be the decision maker while buying your product. So, as a smart content marketer, your research will revolve around influencing factors of decision makers (parents). What kind of features and facilities parents prefer while buying bicycle for their kid? You will pay less attention to the data researched for bicycle that are loved by children. Such data driven decisions can also help product managers to segregate investment in product development costs.

Tip: To stay ahead of your competitor, build data-driven personas and make marketing decisions based on those personas.

Fact-4 : Segment and personalize your leads

Nothing new, we all know email marketing is done on the basis of segmentation and personalization of leads. But, this is a bookish knowledge which we all digital marketers have learnt by heart. The actual segmentation and personalization can be done only if you know your buyer personas. It helps in communicating in their language. Also, you can distribute the products using their preferred channels and customize the marketing content for each persona.

Let’s take a scenario of banking systems with respect to buyer persona facts.

Banks do not have a single type of persona. Their customers vary from account holders to borrowers, investors to pensioners, etc. Their traits also vary significantly. Some are tech-savvy and some even struggle to fill hard copy forms. In such a diverse set of customers, retaining existing customers and attracting new customers throw a huge challenge. Here, banks can craft the marketing message in accordance with the buyer personas. E.g. the challenges faced by an investor is to take the time out and find the means to invest wisely. The challenges faced by an entrepreneur could be finding a bank that offers money for business expansion. A joint account holder couple might be struggling for paying off their mortgage.

In all such cases, email marketers should send personalised emails that cater to the recipients requirements. They need to include text and images that triggers the recipients requirements.

Fact-5 : Prepare customers’ mindset to buy your product

Think about beauty and wellness industry. They need to do visual marketing and video marketing over text-based content marketing. They need to create graphics, gifs with images of real people to represent the different segments of their customer base. These graphics are based on nothing else but buyer personas. They sell weight-loss program by using real people images who look a little fat and heavy than normal BMI range. They sell beauty products using ‘before / after’ images to create a strong impact on their customers’ mindset.

In digital marketing, you need to understand that your customers have some preconceived notions and expectations from your product or service. If they tend to look for bargaining or discounts, coupons and vouchers, you can sell them multiple offerings. You can SALE more by offering more discounts. You can display products with lesser price after striking out higher prices.

And, if your target audience is emotional and looking for a refined experience, you can even emotionally charge them more. E.g. selling a weight loss tablet can be easy for you rather than selling weight machine.

Tip: If your buyer persona is in line with your real customers, your visual content marketing job is half done. It prepares your customers’ mindset to buy your product / service instantly.

Over to you – Create your own buyer Persona that boost your digital marketing and sales efforts

Have had a lot of discussions of buyer persona facts, now is the right time to bring it in practice. Follow these simple steps and create your own marketing persona that boost your digital marketing and sales efforts.

• Identify your best customers
• Figure out their general pain points and challenges
• Conduct extensive research, surveys, and interviews
• Walk in the shoes of your persona

The amazing buyer persona facts is it works on pareto principle. Yes, 80/20 rules apply here. You get 80% of the revenue from your 20% of the customer base. Spend your time on those cash cows by creating a perfect buyer persona. Also, spend 20% of your time in researching and preparing a buyer persona and 80% on preparation of your marketing campaigns addressed to those personas. Those 20% of time will contribute to 80% of the overall boost in revenue. The only game here is optimization. Don’t create a static one, keep optimizing it from time to time. Try it out and share your buyer persona facts and experiences with us. We would love to hear from you.