2020 was a game-changer for marketing. While the concept of buyer personas has been common in the marketing world for some time now, many new businesses are still forgetting to implement this tactic when defining their digital marketing strategy. Start out on the right foot by defining your customers and target audiences. Take time to create helpful buyer personas to make sure you're breaking through the noise in this ever-growing world of advertising and speaking to the right people.

What is a Buyer Persona?

Buyer personas are detailed, specific and fictitious profiles of your company’s target customers. Buyer personas are used to give marketers a clear idea of whom they are speaking to when creating content and driving campaign goals. When developed and used correctly, buyer personas are an essential piece of a well-rounded marketing plan. They can become useful marketing tools to ensure that you consistently target your intended audience in the best way. 

Buyer personas are a tool that, while relatively common, aren’t being used as often as necessary. Buyer personas are easily overlooked and, in some cases, not taken seriously by marketers. 

Developing a marketing plan without defining the end consumer can be a misstep for marketers as disconnected content often lacks the clarity, focus, relevancy and proper vocabulary target audiences are seeking. Businesses large and small, can benefit from creating detailed buyer personas as they’re more likely to create content that aligns with real people. 

Personas should be driven by what you determine to be your most impactful audience segments. Analyze customer lifetime value (CLV) to track as part of your customer experience. Determine a customer’s value to your company, not just for a single purchase or interaction but across the whole relationship. Use critical data to aggregate your audience into demographics and persona groups. The goal of buyer personas is not to represent all audiences but to focus on defining the audiences of highest value who will make the most significant impact.

These representations in your buyer personas should be based on qualitative and quantitative web analytics, behavioral data, and user research. Your personas will only be as good as the research put behind them.

Best Practices

When researching the creation of your persona groupings, ask questions: 

• Who are your customers and why are they using the product, service, etc.? 

• What behaviors, assumptions and expectations affect their view?

• What does your ideal customer lifetime value look like?

• Where do my ideal customers go for information?

• What shopping or user experiences are they looking for?

• What marketing channels are these customers using or most attentive to?

• Are there any trends in how customers discover or consume your product or service?

Look within your data to determine specific themes/characteristics that are relevant and universal. These themes and characteristics could be a particular location, demographic, or interest. Organize these elements into persona groups that represent your target users. Name or classify each group. 

Tips:

1. Make your personas realistic but don't base them on one specific person.

2. Take the time to develop descriptions of each persona’s background, motivations and expectations.

3. Include descriptive buzzwords for each persona. These words can help you identify how to appeal or speak to them when developing campaigns.

4. Be sure to tie all of your information together by detailing how your brand can help the persona.

Personas generally include these critical pieces of information:

Personas help to focus a campaign by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the dialogue. They also offer a quick and very inexpensive way to test and prioritize marketing strategies. Reach out to nContext for more information on implementing buyer personas to benefit your company!