What's a buyer persona and why should I create one?
If you've started considering marketing and have already done some research or reading on marketing strategies, you might have stumbled upon the terms "buyer persona" or “audience personas" and wondered what that was all about…
Put simply, defining a persona is like doing a sketch portrait of your target audience or ideal customer. It usually comes with giving them a name, an age, a job and trying to understand their needs and motivations.
Talking to clients, I've heard a lot of frustrations around creating personas. A lot of time they are done over and over again but never actually used (or at least not visibly) when it comes to the actual execution of the strategy or tactics. So, really, why should you bother?
Why you should care about audience personas?
For me, it all comes down to one simple rule: if you don't know who your audience is, your marketing is going to fail. It's that simple.
To add to that I would say that if your defined audience is too generic then you also will get very limited success. You need to find that sweet point of not investing too much time into it, but enough for it to be meaningful.
To take things one step further, it's actually not about creating a buyer persona but creating several audience personas. Not all of them might be actual buyers but, depending on your company and your industry, you might need to also consider who is recommending you or who is a detractor in order to make sure your key messages will resonate with them as well. You will also likely need a few personas to address your different segments. As a rule of thumb, I usually aim for 3 to 5.
How do you use your audience and buyer personas?
If done properly, your personas will not include just a pretty picture of your ideal client but include things such as:
Demographic aspects: age, location, job, family situation
Interests:: hobbies, social media, what they read, watch, listen to, etc.
Their wants, needs, fears and motivations
Do you start to see where I'm going? All of these criteria can then be used in multiple ways! Think about creating a Facebook ad campaign for example. The demographic and interest categories are what you will use to narrow down your audience, while the wants/needs are going to be useful in order to cradle your message and call-to-actions.
Knowing what they read, listen to, watch and what social media channel they use and why is essential in order to define your marketing channels. Don't jump onto Instagram simply because you like it and "everyone is doing it!" if that is not where your buyers hang out. That would only lead to more failure and frustration.
Another good example of how to use your personas would be around your content strategy. As you are looking for ideas for blog posts or whitepapers or even email campaigns, always think: will that help persona 1/2/3 make a decision? Will that answer their questions? Or am I just writing for the sake of it? If it's the latter, scrap it and go back to the drawing board!
Knowing your audience, and I mean, really taking the time to define segments, should be one of the very first steps in your marketing strategy.
Usual frustrations around buyer personas
As mentioned before, there is a lot of frustration that exists with creating personas and unfortunately, to be brutally honest, it usually comes with people agency hopping.
You see, even if the basis of personas will mostly be the same across providers, everyone likes to add their grain of salt to the process which means that, each time you'll talk to someone new, they are likely to want you to redo it. And that is not necessarily a bad thing! As businesses evolve, their audience usually does too and revisiting those personas on a regular basis can be a good idea.
I've also heard some reservations about how restrictive these could be. By creating the personas on a granular level, you might be afraid of being too restrictive and missing out on a segment of your audience. I get it, finding that balance is hard. But it all comes down to how you then extrapolate information.
Here's an example: if your persona is Sophie, 34 living in inner-city Sydney. That doesn't mean that you are only going to target 34-year-old women living in Sydney but more likely that your targeting would be women, between the ages of 30 and 40 living in the inner suburbs of a capital city. See? You are still relying on your persona but that doesn't restrict you, it just gives you some guidance around who you are talking to.
How to get started
Ok, so, by now I'm hoping I've convinced you that getting your personas in order was essential and you might have started to draft a couple of ideas here and there. Where do you go from there?
Well, you can start by downloading my free template to create your personas (which comes with a full example to help you). Or you could book a free consultation to talk through your business and challenges!