One of the first questions that I ask a new client as I attempt to understand their business is who is their ideal customer. All too often, they reply, “Everyone.” At this point, I share the value of developing a buyer persona.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a fictional, generalized representation of a company’s ideal customer. It is based on market research and real customer data and is used to understand customer needs, behaviors, and motivations.
According to David Meerman Scott in his book, New Rules of Marketing and PR, buyer personas represent the type of buyer you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product.
By creating a buyer persona, a business can gain a deeper understanding of its target customers and align its marketing and sales efforts with the needs and behaviors of these customers. A buyer persona can help the business attract and retain more customers and, ultimately, drive more revenue.
Buyer personas, however, are not just about demographics. Instead, a persona provides insight into how buyers buy and how you can reach this type of buyer with relevant and timely information.
“Marketers must understand how markets full of buyers navigate the buying decision they want to influence so that they can become a useful, trusted resource throughout the decision. Marketers need to become good listeners if they want to be effective communicators.”
Adele Revella
Adele is a marketing strategist and author who specializes in buyer personas to understand and reach target customers. She is the founder and CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute, a company that helps businesses create and use buyer personas to improve their marketing and sales efforts.
However, creating a buyer persona is not your ultimate goal. Although important, it is not the end game. A buyer persona is simply a deliverable and an artifact of your actual goal, which is to become an expert about the buyer by gaining insight, knowledge, and understanding of why your buyers choose your products and services.
Steps to Create a Buyer Persona
In her book, Adele explains that there are several steps a business can take to create a buyer persona:
The first step in creating a buyer persona is to gather data about your target customers. This data might include conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups with customers, as well as analyzing customer demographics and purchase history.
Once you have gathered data about your customers, the next step is to analyze the data to identify patterns and trends. Look for common characteristics and behaviors among your customers, and use this information to create a detailed profile of your ideal customer.
The final step is to use the information you have gathered and analyzed to create a persona. A buyer persona is a detailed, fictionalized representation of your ideal customer. She recommends giving the persona a name, age, occupation, and other characteristics to help bring it to life.
Gather Data
When gathering data to create a buyer persona, you first want to look at your own sales data. Ideally, you will want to also include the data from prospects that didn’t buy from you and chose someone else’s similar product or service.
In addition to any sales data you may have, here are a few other methods you can use to gather the information necessary to build a buyer persona:
Interviews: Conduct one-on-one interviews with current or potential customers to learn about their needs, preferences, and behaviors.
Surveys: Use surveys to gather information from a larger group of people.
Observation: Observe customers in their natural environment to learn about their behaviors and preferences.
Online research: Use social media, forums, and review sites to gather customer information.
Customer service data: Analyze data from your customer service efforts, such as common questions and complaints, to gain insight into customers’ needs and pain points. Ideally, you will want to include data from prospects who didn’t buy from you and chose someone else to buy from, if you can get it.
Your best data will come from one-on-one interviews. In addition to the basic human demographic information such as age, gender, income, and education level. etc., and company demographics if you are selling to a business, such as company size, industry, and job title, etc., your interview needs to uncover a buyer’s needs and pain points.
Adele recommends that you only plan your first question when you gather information via interviews. Then listen to their response and use follow-up questions to dig deeper. She emphasizes the need to listen to the answers and build upon them rather than generate a series of 10 questions beforehand to ask each interviewee.
The Five Rings
In her book, Adele presents what she calls the five rings. The five rings refer to the five key pieces of information that should be captured when creating a buyer persona to better understand the buyer’s needs and pain points. These rings include:
Priority Initiative: The buyer’s priority initiative is the specific problem or opportunity a buyer is trying to address in their business or personal life. These priority initiatives are often the driving force behind a buyer’s decision to purchase a product or service. Priority initiatives can be either short-term or long-term in nature. Your goal is to try changing the buyer’s internal narrative from “This would be nice to have” to “I must have this.”
Success Factors: The buyer’s success factors are the specific outcomes that a buyer hopes to achieve by addressing their priority initiatives. Success factors are closely tied to a buyer’s goals and objectives, representing the result that the buyer is striving for. Your goal is to answer the question, “What is your prospect looking for when they purchase?”
Perceived Barriers: The barriers perceived by the buyer are the obstacles or challenges that the buyer believes are preventing them from achieving their success factors. These barriers can be internal or external and can be related to various factors such as resources, budget, time, knowledge, or expertise. Your goal is to answer the question, “Why hasn’t your prospect bought yet?”
Buyer’s Journey: The buyer’s journey is the process a buyer goes through when researching and making a purchase decision. Your goal is to answer the question, “What influences the buyer and how do they evaluate their options?”
Decision Factors: The buyer’s decision factors are the specific criteria that a buyer uses to evaluate and compare their options when making a purchase decision. These decision factors can be either functional (related to the features and benefits of a product or service) or emotional (related to the feelings and values of the buyer or how they view your business). Your goal is to answer the question, “What specific things does the buyer want in a product?”
It is important to address several levels of information with each person you interview. Below is a framework you can use to explore the various dimensions of a customer’s journey. You can use it to gather information about your prospective customers to generate an even deeper understanding of their needs and decision-making processes to inform your marketing and sales efforts.
External Influences: You want to explore the external factors influencing a customer’s decision-making process. These might include economic conditions, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. For example, the state of the economy, the industry trends, and the specific features and pricing of competing solutions may influence a customer’s decision to purchase your product or service.
Goals and Challenges: You want to explore the specific goals and challenges the customer faces in their role and responsibilities within their organization or their personal life. For example, a customer considering hiring you as a marketing consultant for their small business might have goals such as increasing lead generation or improving customer segmentation and might face challenges such as budget constraints or a lack of technical expertise.
Decision-Making Process: You want to explore the buyer’s preferred research and evaluation methods. The buyer’s decision-making process is the steps they take when evaluating and making a purchase decision. The buyer’s decision-making process might include gathering information about different options, consulting with colleagues or other stakeholders, and evaluating options based on specific criteria. For example, a customer considering buying your widget might read reviews, watch product demos, and speak with sales representatives. After which, they might consult with their other team members and evaluate the options based on price, functionality, and integration with other systems.
Objections and Concerns: You want to explore the objections and concerns that the customer has about making a purchase. The buyer’s objections and concerns might include budget, risk, or perceived value. For example, a customer might have concerns about the cost of your software or might be hesitant to implement your solution due to the potential disruption it could cause to their current processes.
Decision Criteria: You want to explore the specific criteria that the customer uses to evaluate options and make a purchasing decision. The buyer’s decision criteria might include price, performance, and reliability. For example, a customer might prioritize your inventory tracking application because it offers value for money, has a proven track record, is reliable, and is easy to use.
Emotions and Motivations: You want to explore the fears, hopes, and personal values that drive the buyer’s behavior and decision-making process. For example, if a company is selling a product or service that addresses a fear that many people have, such as the fear of identity theft or of losing their savings in an economic downturn, understanding and addressing these fears in marketing messaging could be an effective way to connect with potential customers. On the other hand, if a company is selling a product or service that aligns with the personal values of its target audience, such as eco-friendliness or social responsibility, highlighting these values in marketing materials could also be a powerful way to connect with potential customers.
Analyze the Buyer Insight Data
Analyzing the buyer insight data you have collected involves sorting the data and identifying common themes and patterns that can help you understand your customer’s needs, goals, and motivations.
Below are some ways you can organize and analyze the buyer insight data to identify themes and patterns:
Create a spreadsheet or database to store the data for easy analysis.
Sort the data into different categories, such as demographics, behaviors, attitudes, and goals.
Look for trends and patterns in the data, such as common characteristics among your most valuable customers or behaviors correlated with high engagement levels.
Identify gaps or areas where you have limited data and consider conducting additional research to fill these gaps.
Your goal in organizing and analyzing buyer insight data is to gain a deeper understanding of your customers so you can use this information to inform your marketing and sales strategies.
Create Your Buyer Persona
Once you have identified the key characteristics and goals of your ideal customer, you can create a buyer persona by summarizing this information in a document or template. A buyer persona might include details such as the customer’s age, gender, job title, income level, and other demographic information. It should also include information about the customer’s goals, challenges, and motivations, as well as any other relevant details that will help you understand their needs and preferences.
It’s important to keep in mind that your buyer persona should be a representation of your ideal customer rather than an exact match with a given individual. By creating a buyer persona, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and use that information to inform your marketing and sales strategies.
The following is an example of a template to capture your buyer persona.
Name of Your Fictional Buyer Persona:
Human and Company Demographics:
Age Range:
Gender:
Income Level:
Education Level:
Geographical Location:
Company Size:
Industry:
Job Title/Role:
Goals and Objectives:
Challenges and Pain Points:
Motivations and Drivers:
Behaviors and Actions Taken:
Values and Priorities:
This template provides a basic outline for recording your buyer persona’s key characteristics and goals. You can customize the template to include additional details relevant to your business and target audience. It’s important to remember to base your buyer persona on real data and research, instead of assumptions or stereotypes.
Limit the Number of Buyer Personas
When it comes to small businesses, you really want to limit the number of buyer personas you create. Most companies have too many buyer personas. They create a set of personas for each industry or customer type.
When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales, it can get even worse. When I talk B2B, I always share that there are three key roles that you have to address in a complex sale, the technical guy, the money guy, and the purchasing guy. Each role requires a different message during the sales process. However, according to Adele, who has worked with many different types of companies, what most discover is that after organizing and analyzing buyer insight data, most of the insights are shared by the technical, money, and purchasing person and across various industries.
If you create a persona for each industry and job title/role, it will often backfire because all they do is suck up more time and resources, but they don’t do anything to generate more revenue. There’s a limit to how many different versions of your story you can have.
“Don’t build more buyer personas than you can afford to market to. There’s no value in that.”
Adele Revella.
Therefore, when it comes to most small businesses, it is better to create a buyer persona that allows you to focus your marketing and sales on what they all have in common vs. creating multiple personas.
How many customer personas does your business have?
