Who are you looking for?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
That’s an accurate description, in case you were wondering, but it doesn’t explain why you need to know that information. Knowing who your personas are gives you GIGANTIC insights on anything from what color your logo should be to knowing where and when to make an offer or place an ad. Does your ideal customer see billboards, or do they even drive? Do they read mountain biking magazines, or are they online gamers? Do they shop at Amazon? Trader Joe’s? Thrift stores? Are they mostly men, or women? A certain age? From a specific region? Do they like red?
When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.
Buyer personas provide structure and insight for your company. A detailed buyer persona will help you determine:
- where to focus your marketing time and budget
- how to guide product development based on what your personas want
- how to create alignment across your organization by sharing this info with everyone from your salespeople to your product designers
All these details can tell you where, when and how to communicate best with potential customers. As a result, you will be able to attract the most valuable visitors, leads, and customers to your business – the people most likely to purchase your product or service, and most apt to tell their friends.
Let’s break this down a bit. If you don’t know who your personas are, you are likely to make important decisions based off of personal preferences, or what your cousin did, or what the infomercial said would work. Stop and think how big of a difference it might make in your marketing approach just knowing that one of your primary personas is a 24 year old, female athlete, compared to a 45 year old, man who’s into barbeque. The design style, colors, fonts, and imagery of your brand would be completely different for each of these people. Even where you buy ad space would be different.