We all know that when we create content for our marketing, we need to create it with a buyer in mind. But do you understand exactly how much a buyer persona affects what you create?
In this blog post, we look at buyer personas, also known as customer profiles or avatars, how you create them and how this information affects your content strategy.
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an ideal customer created based on market research, data analysis, and customer feedback. The buyer persona helps companies better understand their customers and create more effective marketing strategies.
A buyer persona typically includes the customer's demographic profile, interests, behaviours, pain points, goals, and purchasing habits.
How to create a buyer persona for your business
Creating a buyer persona for your business involves several steps.
Research - Market research, surveys, customer feedback, social media, and website analytics can help you collect data and insights about your customers. This data can include demographic information, purchase behaviour, interests, challenges, and pain points.
Analysis - Once you have collected data, analyse it to identify patterns, trends, and common characteristics among your customers.
Segmentation - Use the data analysis to group your customers into different segments based on similarities in their age, behaviour, needs, and interests.
Persona creation - Select a specific customer segment and create a detailed profile representing your ideal customer. Include age, gender, occupation, education, interests, challenges, goals, and purchasing behaviour. Give it a name and a face to make it more relatable and memorable. For example, I can guarantee that most businesses will have a “Mr. or Mrs. Cost” - someone who understands benefits based on costs vs ROI.
The most important thing to remember is that customer profiles are not and should not be based on assumptions. They should be based on fact. If you are struggling with that, it shows a need for more research and analysis.
Can you have more than one buyer persona?
Yes, it is common for businesses to have multiple buyer personas as long as they represent factual segments of your customer base. For example, a fashion retailer may have one persona for budget-conscious shoppers who are interested in discounts and promotions and another for their higher-end shoppers interested in luxury and quality.
Each persona should have its unique characteristics, needs, and pain points. This will allow you to create more targeted marketing campaigns and develop products and services that meet the specific needs of each customer segment.
Will my buyer personas be the same as my competitors?
Not necessarily. While your business and competitors overlap in the target audience, each company will likely have unique buyer personas based on customer research and insights.
Even if two businesses have similar target audiences, their buyer personas may differ due to differences in brand messaging, marketing strategies, and product offerings. For example, one company may focus on affordability while another business may focus on luxury, and their respective buyer personas would reflect these different values and priorities.
How your buyer personas affect your content targeting
I recently wrote a content marketing dictionary entry for the term “buyer journey”, the process a customer goes through to buy your product or service. Identifying and understanding your buyer personas directly affects how you structure your marketing around the buyer journey for each customer.
Let me explain.
Julie owns a small law firm and seeks a new IT support professional. Her biggest pain point is data protection. Knowing this, my attention to detail in messaging and content types has to reflect how my IT client (we’ll call him Daniel) can serve her, offering industry compliance and client peace of mind.
Here’s another example.
Daniel, our IT support service provider, also serves other SMEs; another buyer persona is “Mr. Digital Transformation”; we’ll call him “Di-Angelo”. Di-Angelo seeks an IT provider to bring his company’s tech into the 21st century. He also wants to offer more hybrid working opportunities for his staff. How I create Daniel’s marketing content for this buyer persona differs from Julie, our lawyer. Why because although Di-Angelo will be worried about cybercrime, his main barrier to purchase is that he wants to understand what tech he needs to improve productivity from staff who may be in any location.
So while our CTA remains the same, booking an on-site consultation with Daniel, how we get our buyers to this point is different.
If you need a copywriter to create compelling copy, someone who understands the customer journey, fill in the project brief form below!
