Buyer personas are the basis from which all your digital marketing strategies are born, because it is the way in which you define your target customers.
Each buyer persona is a template that will allow you to define the type of message, product and forms of persuasion with which you must address each of your market segments, in order to build a high-value and quality content strategy that will help generate new leads through a conversion funnel.
Let’s define what a buyer persona is.
It is understood that a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. In the world of user experience (UX) he is known only as a person and comes to define the ideal user of a certain technological product or service.
Why is a buyer persona said to be a semi-fictional representation?
The semi-fictional word comes to indicate that in reality there is no person who combines all the characteristics that your buyer persona has, but there are individuals or prospective clients who share several of those same needs, characteristics and desires.
Understand it well, a buyer persona template will seek to encompass a specific type of ideal client, for example: CEO of a technology company. Obviously, there are many types of CEO but almost all of them face similar challenges, such as a high demand for technology due to Covid-19.
In short, a buyer persona does not describe a specific individual, but is the graphical and summarized representation of a whole group of people who share common needs that your business can solve.
How are buyer personas created?
Generating buyer persona profiles takes hours and hours of research. What’s more, it is a process that never ends, because the needs of customers will vary according to the context in which they live, as seen in the previous example where we talked about Covid-19, a disease that emerged this year. .
To create these customer profiles, you can make use of the following research methods:
Conduct interviews:
It doesn’t matter what means you use to contact customers whether it’s by email, phone, and electronic surveys or in person. The idea is to collect the greatest amount of information from users and mainly from those who stopped using it after a while.
If your business is just starting out and you don’t have a database of clients to interview, look for family, friends and acquaintances who more or less fit the type of person you want as a client.
Identify trends:
Here we are talking about metrics and therefore, KPIs that are relevant to understand the needs of customers through the type of information they consume on your website.
The most visited pages are the front door of your conversion funnel, as well as the landing pages with the highest number of conversions, they draw a pattern of the needs and desires of your customers.
Use this information, optimize it in terms of SEO and develop lead magnets around them, because the trend of your clients is showing you with numbers that there lies a point of true interest for those interested in your brand.
What is the importance of customer profiles within the digital marketing strategy?
Buyer personas are the foundation from which all your marketing and sales strategy arises. They are the ones that tell you what type of user you want to attract to your website in order to have a better chance of generating conversions.
Also, they are the only logical and feasible resource that allows you to clean up your prospect databases, because they point out negative leads that don’t really fit your strategy and are only there to increase CAC, decreasing your ROI.
Finally, building a really specific and very detailed buyer persona will allow you to reduce your investment in online advertising, generate CTAs that really connect with the audience and create a content marketing strategy that speaks to your ideal client in order to provide value.
Summary of the post and frequently asked questions about buyer persona:
What are buyer personas?
A company creates a character called a buyer persona to identify its ideal type of customer. The group of individuals developing it develops it based on both collected data and inferences.
Be careful, a buyer persona does not represent a real individual, but combines common characteristics shared by most of the people who are within one of your company’s market segments.
What are the most common methods for collecting information from a buyer persona?
Every buyer persona must start from real information, although the group that creates it can take some creative licenses and speak from experience.
But companies often use the following research methods to obtain information from customers or prospects:
- Interviews.
- surveys
- Evaluation of customer behavior metrics and data.
- Form optimization.
- Meeting with the sales team.
- Interview with the customer service department.
What are user tests and how do they help generate a buyer persona?
Real users who interact with a certain product or service conduct user tests, also known as usability tests. These evaluations gather the users’ perspectives as they provide feedback on their interactions with the product.
These types of tests are ideal when creating a buyer persona, because they allow you to gather people who are similar to your prospective client and ask their opinion about your products, services and even the navigability and content of your website.
Conclusion.
In short, buyer personas are the first step, not only to generate a solid and highly successful digital marketing strategy, but also to identify your ideal client who gives your business the reason for being.
Let’s start from a basic example, if a child tells you that he wants to be a doctor and you ask him why he wants to study that? Surely, he will answer that to cure the sick, her motivation is in itself a very basic buyer persona. Every business idea arises based on a need that a group of people have; therefore, every business is born from a buyer persona. However, attracting the attention of this group of clients is not an easy task and that is where digital marketing strategies are born.
