I was so excited when I was introduced to Inbound Marketing. Finally all of the things that I had learned and formed opinions on in regards to business had a pre-established home. When I was introduced to Buyer Personas as an aspect of Inbound Marketing my head exploded!
Here was a business exercise that perfectly resonated with me and I couldn’t wait to put it into action.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a way to pin point your target audience utilizing the more readily available data points that we gather in commerce.
Back in the day of targeting an audience we would make a broad generalization based on on our product or service.
For example: If I had a home decor shop I would make a concerted effort to target married women between the ages of 25-50, or if I had a beard care product I might target single males between the ages of 20-35. This is not to say that men wouldn’t be interested in home decor or women to….well, maybe not….but this was where we might get the most bang for our buck.
With creating a buyer persona you are getting much more specific and much more granular.
How to we create a Buyer Persona?
When creating a buyer persona you are going to answer 4 major categories and the few sub categories within each. As follows:
(please note that I go into much more detailed instruction on the attached video)
WHO: Demographics, Background, Identifiers
WHAT: Goals, Challenges, Solutions
WHY: Quotes, Objections
HOW: Marketing Message, Elevator Pitch
Once your assembled team begins to explore each of these categories and subcategories a real persona begins to emerge. This person gets specific to sex, station in life, income, priorities, income, geographic location and more.
At the end of this exercise you will have created a person that has a name, a look, preferences, habits and even specific clothes and eye color.
It is important to point out that a company rarely has just one buyer persona and the exercise should be repeated until all of your demographics are represented, very seldom more than three.
Once the buyer persona is established, it is time to make them real. Have an illustrator draw your people, have bobble heads made of them and distribute to your staff or have actors portray them on a video introducing themselves to your staff in full character.
You now have a way of communicating with and referring to specific people as a means of tracking successes and failures. For example: “We have been doing a great job reaching Sarah and Cliff but are dropping the ball a little on Haley”.
The idea is to create content specifically targeted towards your personas understanding that any other demographic on the fringes will be equally as entertained, educated and drawn to you service or product.
The most wonderful thing about this exercise for a company is how intimately your staff is going to be introduced to internal culture and philosophies that they may not have known or realized.
Please watch my video for a much more detailed look at creating your companies Buyer Persona!
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