What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a representation of a business’s ideal customer based on different market research and real data about existing customers. Think of it as imaging of your ideal superhero, based on collecting facts about superheroes who already exist; it is a semi-fictional character for your storyline.

Fortunately, establishing a buyer persona allows you to better understand and relate to a specific audience that is being targeted for your products and/or services. As stated previously, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of a business’s ideal customer. However, the buyer persona needs to be based on real-world information rather than an imagination or gut instinct. 

Why are Buyer Personas Important to your Business?

Buyer Personas are crucial to your business because they conceptualize and formulate the ideal customer for your brand. Although a company cannot target every consumer in the market, being able to narrow it down and make it more targeted allows your marketing team to strategize a formulated plan of action to generate new business. 

7 Easy Ways to Collect Buyer Persona Data

Collecting information to build a buyer’s persona will guide your business down the right steps to properly establish your customer base, which will generate more sales. The right buyer persona will also help your business personalize its marketing and make it scalable. 

Analytics

You cannot go off of what your gut is telling you. Instead, ask yourself different questions about the product or service you are offering, and who would be interested in what you have to offer. The more details you can collect, the better the outcome will be. 

What is the data showing you? Analyzing your website and social analytics will provide a significant amount of information about the type of visitors are interacting with your brand, even if they have not yet transitioned into customers.

Social Media

Digging into your website and social analytics tools can provide a significant amount of information about the people who are interacting with you and your brand online. Even if they are not customers, Facebook Audience Insights can provide valuable and detailed information about your Buyer’s Persona. 

Feedback

Engaging in social listening will allow your business to collect information about your consumers’ pain points and goals and then develop a more robust persona later on. After gathering information about the different pain points and goals from various individuals and data, your team will be able to present your products and/or services to potential customers. This allows them to gain a deep understanding of what it will be like to use the product or service.

Orders 

Orders allow you to learn about who has already bought from you. This will enable you to gather all of the information you can about your current customer base. Some data points that will be collected are age, location, language, income, buying behavior, interests, and activities. 

Once this data is collected through previous orders, your team will be able to guestimate and determine different buying behaviors that will efficiently develop future orders. 

Surveys

If your business has infinite prospects and customers to target, surveys are an efficient resource for collecting valuable feedback. The neat fact with surveys is that not every detail is required, where asking 8 to 10 questions can provide more than enough information for your buyer’s personas. 

Surveys also help with revealing different patterns and trends from online responses. These responses will generate useful analytics and improve the persona-creating process.

• How do you generate a survey?

Keeping your survey short and sweet is key to generating descriptive information to develop your persona. This background information includes asking questions, including their age, income level, gender, occupation, etc. Asking questions that lean on a more personal side will allow trust to build between the responder and surveyor. More importantly, asking at least one open-ended question will provide additional insight into the individual values that your personas represent. 

Demographics

For your buyer persona, this is when the semi-fictional aspect comes into play. On top of all of the in-depth research that is conducted to better understand your audience and customer, it is important to generate a list of characteristics that make up your ideal customer.

For example, your list of characteristics may include:

• Their age
• Where they live
• Where they work
• Information about their family
  • Do they have pets? Kids? A spouse?
• Their hobbies

Although not every person within this customer group will match the characteristics exactly, it does represent the group as a collection of data points.

Direct Competitors

Finally, check out the competition. It is important to see what they are up to so you are able to stay a few steps ahead. Find out what can you learn from their efforts that can assist in differentiating your brand.

Once you have gathered the information about your competition, customers, and prospects, it will provide valuable insight on who is interacting with the competition. Are they reaching the same target groups as you are? Have they reached new groups before you could catch up? Collecting this data and information will let your business learn from their efforts and help you differentiate your brand from the competition.

Taking Data to the Next Level

Utilizing the data from your buyer persona’s will help your team craft strong marketing strategies that will drive audience engagement. It is important to think about your buyer personas every time to decide your business’s marketing strategy. Once you can fully grasp those personas, you will be able to build a strong bond with real customers, which will boost sales and establish brand loyalty and trust. 

Need help creating your brand’s buyer persona(s)? Check out our resources designed to help your business and marketing techniques to use for your best path forward.