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do you know your customers? Here’s how to create and use buyer personas
with free template
Rachel, the mompreneur, Phoebe, the freelancer or Chandler, the data specialist. Buyer personas are semi-fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. By giving one personality to these groups you can understand your customers and will be able to provide content that is truly valuable for them. Creating these marketing personas can be time-consuming, but also extremely fun and useful.
Why I need buyer personas?
Well-created buyer personas can help you to reach your goals by focusing your energies on creating value to the right people instead of making content for “everyone”. Also, if you think of your target groups as one person it helps to relate more to its problems and motivations – why is she looking for a new solution or what he wants to avoid – so you can offer them the best solution and help them through the process.
Well-created buyer personas can help you to reach your goals by focusing your energies on creating value to the right people.
Okay, I get the idea. But how do I make one?
First, I suggest you download my free guide Let’s create buyer personas, that contains a template that guides you through the process.
How to get started
To get started with the actual work examine your existing customers and think about other audience segments you can work with. Try to focus on your ideal customers and don’t waste on groups who might want to buy your services/products at one point in their life.
If you have no customers yet, you can make a focus group and should start stalking a bit… Think about people who can represent your ideal customers and ask them about their goals, fears and everything you want to include into your document. Furthermore, check out what your competitors do, and how their follower base looks like.
Image source: Pexels by Ksenia Chernaya
Think about people who can represent your ideal customers and ask them about their goals, fears and everything you want to include into your document.
What to include
When creating your personas, consider including the following: a short introduction, demographics and income, social media usage – especially if your goal is to build a strong online presence – goals and challenges. The more information you have and the more detailed you are the better the results you can achieve. So, feel free to be creative and add any fields that helps your work. For example, you can add the mother language of your persona. If you’re making custom earrings, the favourite colour of your persona can be an important addition.
“When should I use these personas?”
Sort answer
Constantly.
long answer
Use them for campaign planning. Now, that you know the main challenges of your target audience you can provide solutions to them. Create content (blog posts, guides, e-books, social media posts) that they find helpful, so you can build better relationships.
Use this document when you’re thinking about product development or new service packages.
Buyer personas are also a great help when you’re planning a paid campaign – eg. on social media. Most networks offer you amazingly detailed targeting options and with all info in hand you can target like a pro.
Image source: Unsplash by Austin Distel
The NeverEnding Story
No, I’m not speaking about the book…
You need to understand, that you’re never really finished creating your buyer personas – and you should never stop updating and re-evaluating them. As you grow and gather more data you can add further information to your existing ones. Your business may change its’ original direction therefore your ideal customer will change too, or you add new solutions to your portfolio, that is aimed for different people. No matter what’s the reason don’t forget to refresh your buyer personas in regular intervals.
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