If you are a person that is conversant with online marketing systems in the past few years, you will not be new to the world of “Buyer Persona”, which can also be called an "Ideal Customer Profile"
Not everybody knows what a buyer persona is and how they can use it in their marketing.
But did you know what buyer persona is? And if you do, how much do you know about it?
Before we go deeper into what it is, let me start with the definition of a persona.
A buyer persona is a description of your ideal customers based on your research.
It lists everything about your ideal customers, from age, gender, job, hobby e.t.c. It is just like an actual description of a real person.
A persona will help you concentrate more on qualified potential customers, guide you to provide development that suits the needs of your prospects, and arrange all the necessary work across all the departments of your organization.
Your business will be able to attract valuable website visitors, leads, and potential customers as a result of your detailed persona research.
The visitors that come to your website through your persona research are more likely to stay for a long time.
Having a deep understanding of a buyer persona is important for your business as it helps you in the creation of your business content, content distribution, product offering development e.t.c that mostly relate to the customer acquisition and retention of your customers.
I know you might be questioning yourself if truly you need a buyer persona or not? The truth is that with a deep research persona, you will clearly define your potential customers and how you can reach them.
A persona can also be called a customer persona, it has various names given to it, but, the term you used in defining your buyer persona doesn’t matter, what really matters is the purpose.
The purpose is all the same irrespective of the names given to it.
The Importance of A Buyer Persona (Ideal Customer Profile)
A buyer persona helps you to know the problem your ideal customers are struggling with.
It allows you to tailor your marketing strategy effectively by speaking directly to the customers that are interested in buying from you.
It is not a lie that 80% of successful companies have a well-detailed and documented buyer persona.
Coming up with a detailed buyer persona may sound like a no-brainer, but it isn’t as simple as it sounds.
If you really want to make use of buyer persona to make more sales you will need to understand who your ideal customers really are.
Your buyer persona should be based on concrete research and not assumptions.
To create a buyer persona, you must be able to answer almost all these personal questions;
A lot of companies with no buyer persona don’t pay attention to what customers need or how they can solve their potential customer's problems.
Many businesses present themselves awkwardly to their customers by just telling them what they do and not how they can help solve customer challenges or problems.
This attitude stops a lot of customers from buying their product or to even considering buying from them.
People buy from the company or business they know or trust when they want to make a buying decision.
If you want people to buy from you; you have to first build trust by showing genuine concern and understanding about their challenges and problems.
It requires a lot of effort for you to gain your prospect's trust, you have to shift the way you present yourself to them.
Stop showing what you do instead show them how you can solve their problem, that way they will be able to trust you enough to buy from you.
So you have to make sure you use your buyer persona to guide your business because it will help you in recognizing your prospect's needs and challenges.
How Are Buyer Personas (Ideal Customer Profile) Used?
The process used in building a concrete buyer persona is like shedding light in a nook.
You will need to ask yourself a lot of in-depth questions about who your prospects really are, these deep questions will draw your attention to many unanswered questions about your business.
There is no standard of numbers for the buyer personas you need because businesses are unique in many different ways and for that reason.
Your business buyer personas should be unique to you alone.
You should keep in mind when asking those deep questions that assumption is bad, never assume.
Do deep research so that you can get your desired result.
You can use an online survey tool like SURVEY MONKEY to ask your prospects some clarifying questions, this by far is one of the simplest methods you can use to create a buyer persona.
After which you will use your buyer’s persona (Ideal Customer Profile) to guide the direction of your work. For example:
Should Small Businesses Bother Building Personas?
Because many big businesses use buyer persona doesn’t mean small businesses don’t need it.
As a small business owner or solopreneur, you need a buyer persona as much as the big businesses do because it will help you to clearly define your audience which will save you from wasting your time on marketing that doesn’t deliver results.
For example, let’s imagine you're a digital marketing freelancer and you have a website or a blog where you share educational content on online marketing.
Obviously, you want to attract customers who are interested in hiring a digital marketing freelancer.
A buyer persona is the best fit that will help narrow your focus.
After your buyer persona research you might find out that the majority of your customers might be new to the marketing world.
You can then adjust your website and blog content to serve them; this will then make it easier for you to generate content that will resonate with your website visitors.
How to Create a Buyer’s Persona for Small Businesses.
It takes both inbound and outbound research to create a well-detailed buyer persona as noted earlier in my post and a lot of businesses will have to create multiple buyer personas to represent different customers and their challenges.
If you have already started your business you can also start your buyer persona by asking your current customers questions related to the problems they are facing from the product you offer or from the problem they want to solve but your business does not offer them.
You can also choose a target customer and build a buyer persona on the research you already know about him/her then you can increase your research as days go by.
You will have to take your time and jot down the list of questions you want to ask your current customers because there is no one-size fit all questions.
You will be able to create your buyer’s persona after conducting concrete research on different prospects.
As a digital marketing professional, I have helped many brands in developing a buyer’s persona while they enhance it as they get to know more about their customers.
If you have never created a buyer persona before you can start with HubSpot buyer persona.
Hubspot also has a detailed buyer’s persona pdf guide that will help you get started.
After your persona, you will need to also create a sale funnel.
A sales funnel is the journey your customers pass through before they make a purchase from you.
You can also read my article on how to increase your online sales with a sales funnel strategy or my short blog post on the basic principle of a sales funnel.