Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers, shaped by market research and in-depth analysis. They provide a full picture of your target audience, clarifying their demographics, behaviours, needs, challenges and preferences.

Creating a suite of buyer personas can prove a real asset to your marketing efforts in more ways than one…

Better understanding of your audience

Before you start to invest serious time and money into implementing a marketing strategy, it’s imperative to ensure that you fully understand your ideal customer and their customer journey.

In our experience, the very process of creating buyer personas can encourage clients to consider their target audiences in greater depth; exploring demographic information, challenges, needs and wants in detail.

Provide a focus point for marketing activity

Buyer personas provide a level of detail and focus which can help you optimise your marketing efforts, but fully understanding your audience goes beyond marketing. Creating buyer personas can help you identify the product mixes which appeal to different elements of your key audiences.

This understanding can provide the knowledge to optimise every level of your business - from product development to growth strategy, as well as the key messages, content and social media channels that most resonate.

Humanise marketing efforts and guide your team

Buyer personas can ensure all members of your team are clear, focused and unified in their targeting. Creating a face and name for profiles can help to reinforce the notion of taking a personal approach to all activity - you can picture marketing to ‘Rachel’, ‘Javi’ or ‘Claire’ instead of just the notions behind the persona they represent.

Your buyer personas remind you to keep your market research front-and-centre at every stage of the customer journey, whilst encouraging you to interact with customers in a more personal way.

Improve budget efficiency

Well-crafted personas can prove cost-effective, ensuring marketing activity is well-aligned to engage your target audience and allow you to focus your time, money and effort on delivering the best return on investment. By improving your focus and increasing the relevancy of your product, branding, marketing channels and content, you can drive marketing results and maximise return on investment.

How do I create buyer personas?

To create buyer personas, gather information from your sales team, create surveys for customers, hold 1-1 interviews, focus groups and delve into existing market research. You can then use this information to shape detailed buyer personas, representing the attributes, frustrations and needs of your main categories of buyer. Revisit your buyer personas every 6 months, if possible, to ensure your marketing remains targeted and agile.

What next?

Constructing your buyer personas is not a quick task. However, having a clear understanding of your audience will help your business determine where to focus efforts, ensuring everyone across your business understands your company's key messages and can use them positively to achieve your goals. Knowing your audience means that you will be able to target activity accordingly, attract valued visitors to your business, and convert leads into customers with more confidence and success.

To find out more about buyer personas and how they fit into a wider inbound marketing strategy, download our handy ebook now, or drop us a line to discuss how they can be successfully utilised in your growth strategy.