A buyer persona is a representation of ideal customers or target audiences based on the information gathered about the customers during research and available data on existing customers.
One of the ideas behind creating buyer personas is to capture a wide range of customers and categorize them into different groups based on similarities.
Since there are different categories of customers patronizing a business, the practical thing to do is to create multiple buyer personas to capture each category.
A typical buyer persona should include the following details;
As a business owner, a comprehensive buyer persona is one of the critical resources you can have at your disposal because –
Creating a useful buyer persona requires spending time researching potential customers and effort aimed at analyzing data on existing customers.
The goal of creating buyer personas is to know important details about your target audience. Therefore, ensure that the team understands the goal of creating the buyer persona.
Here are the steps to creating a buyer persona
Research potential and existing customers to gain insights into their motivations and thought processes when buying your product. Research can be done through online polls, surveys, and in-person interviews.
Also, you should consider factors like demographic, interests, geographic location, and communication preferences(email or texts) while researching.
One important thing about researching when creating a buyer persona is knowing the right questions to ask, and the one way to know what questions to ask is by understanding your research goal.
Next, you want to identify the customers’ needs, pain points, motivations, and goals they are trying to achieve with your product.
Create different personas based on similarities between customers’ needs, goals, motivations, demographics, challenges, etc. Each persona you create represents a group of consumers with similar characteristics.
Buyer personas represent ideal customers, and ideal customers have their stories, background, interests, challenges, and needs. Therefore, humanize your personas by giving them a name and a story to help you understand them better.
Buyer and user personas are tools used in marketing and product design to understand a target audience better. However, they serve different purposes and are created using different data types.
A buyer persona represents a fictional representation of the ideal customer for a particular product or service. This persona is created using market research, customer data, and other relevant information about the target audience. A buyer persona focuses on the characteristics of the person most likely to make a purchase, such as their demographics, interests, pain points, and buying habits.
On the other hand, a user persona represents a fictional representation of the ideal product or service user. This persona is created using data gathered through user research, such as interviews, surveys, and observational studies. A user persona focuses on the characteristics of the person who will be using the product or service, such as their goals, needs, preferences, and behaviors.