4 Tips to help you create buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. Buyer_Persona

They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.

Buyer personas are created through research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. That includes a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside of your contact database who might align with your target audience.

Here are tips to help you create buyer personas:

Interview customers
Review current customers for trends
Use forms to capture persona data
Ask your sales team for feedback

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)

Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop personas:

1. Interview customers

Either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.

2. Review current customers for trends

Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.

3. Use forms to capture persona data

When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important persona information. (For example, if all of your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms. You could also gather information on what forms of social media your leads use by asking a question about social media accounts.)

4. Ask your sales team for feedback

Take into consideration your sales team's feedback on the leads they are interacting with most. (What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?)

At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize or target your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, you can segment by buyer persona and tailor your messaging according to what you know about those different personas. When combined with lifecycle stage (i.e. how far along someone is in the buyers journey), buyer personas also allow you to map out and create highly targeted content.