Why creating buyer personas is so important to a new business
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Posted: Mon 23rd Dec 2024
A buyer persona is a partially fictitious depiction of your target audience. This is based on market research and accurate data about your existing customers.
When you create your buyer persona, you give it an imaginary identity and create "the character". The more you refine this character, the more likely you are to define your target. You should include information such as name and age, demographic data, patterns of behaviour, motivations and interests.
Buyer personas will give your new business a very valuable structure. They'll help focus your time and guide you in developing your products or services. As a result, you'll be able to attract visitors, entice prospects, convince leads and convert them into customers.
So let's look in more detail at buyer personas and why they are vital to any new business.
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a character you create that closely represents your users or customers. It includes their needs, motivations, concerns and goals – in fact, anything that influences how they think about your business and/or your product.
Your buyer personas convey:
who your buyers are
what they're trying to accomplish
what goals drive their behaviour
how they think
how they buy
why they are making buying decisions
You can have more than one user or customer persona for your business.
Defining a buyer's personality is the cornerstone of any marketing and sales strategy. Your actions will be more successful if you can hone your buyer persona as precisely as possible.
Why is defining a buyer persona so crucial?
Inbound marketing is a sophisticated and non-aggressive strategy. It's also focused on the customer. So, before you create a short-term campaign, you need to define your target audience and the people you want to attract.
Your goal is simply to attract potential customers – people who need your product or service. Consequently, it's essential that you do a good job and precisely define your buyer persona.
If you know, for example, that your ideal clients tend to use LinkedIn as their social network, you need to focus on this social network and rule out others.
You might also know that your ideal customer loves productivity and stays up to date with several blogs on this topic. So, you could make the most of a guest blog opportunity and post so your ideal clients can get to know you.
On the other hand, defining your buyer personas means you can customise your marketing strategy for each. For example, you can issue different messages according to your buyer profiles instead of sending the same email to everyone on your database.
That means you're adapting your content for each customer based on the information you've gathered about the different personas.
So, your marketing email will have two benefits: capturing your leads and segmenting them. By knowing exactly who to target, you can give your messages more impact and finer detail.
VIDEO: Finding your brand's target audience
In this webinar, brand strategist Kiki Bhaur explains how to identify and connect with your ideal target audience. Discover the importance of knowing your audience and how to define and research it:
How do I create a buyer persona?
You create your buyer persona through research, analysis and observing your current customers. This will help you understand the mindset of your potential customers and take the appropriate action to approach them.
The most accurate buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base through surveys, interviews and so on.
That includes a mix of customers, prospects and those people outside of your contact database who might align with your target audience.
Here are the three main aspects to remember when creating a buyer persona:
1. Research
It's very important to keep in mind that your buyer persona must be based on market research rather than assumptions. Yes, research takes time, but if you make assumptions that later prove incorrect, you won't identify your ideal customers. So, make sure your research is thorough.
When carrying out research, you must ask questions about demographics, goals and challenges. Here are some examples:
What's your position in the company?
What's your role in the company?
What industry does your company mainly do business in?
What are your work objectives?
What are the most critical challenges you face?
Where will you go to get information?
Do you use the internet to find new suppliers or customers?
Do you use social networks to find new customers? If so, which ones?
The above questions are an indication of what to look for. Focus these on your industry and your current customers, then gather concrete answers. These interviews will help you understand your buyers' goals, behaviour and motivations.
People don't always find it easy to describe this on their own. Consequently, it's important to delve into the answers. Focus your questions on why your buyers behave in a specific way. The solutions will help you design a strong marketing strategy.
What information do I need?
Interview customers either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.
Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important persona information.
Consider feedback from your customer service and sales teams (if you have them) on the customers they are interacting with the most.
2. Identifying trends
The easiest way to carry out your research is to first interview your current and former customers. Your current customers will give you the feedback you need to build your personas. They've already bought your products or services, so you can ask them the following:
What motivated them to choose your business rather than a competitor?
How did they find out about you?
How can you improve your products or services?
After several interviews, you'll notice similar answers. These responses are what we call trends.
3. Creating profiles
Once you've identified these profiles, all you need to do is collect the information and start creating your profiles. At the end of it, you should have a very clear idea of:
who your potential customer is
what their interests are
what their work goals are
This is highly valuable information to create your marketing strategy and attract your ideal customers.
Buyer personas are essential for any new business. Indeed, they're the foundation on which any marketing and sales strategy is built. Distinct personas can mean the difference between generating sales or losing them.
VIDEO: How small businesses can create buyer personas
Marketer Dan Smith explains why buyer personas are essential for marketing, and outlines the steps you can take to build them from scratch.
How do I use buyer personas?
Buyer personas allow you to personalise 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, segment by buyer persona and tailor your messaging according to what you know about those different personas.
What are the benefits of developing buyer personas?
Defining and creating buyer personas helps you to achieve much more cost-effective marketing, reduces marketing waste, and increases your return on investment (ROI). Here's why:
With targeted marketing, you can convey very clear and strong messages to the key audience that's ready and waiting to hear it and, more importantly, act on it.
When you have clearly defined buyer personas, you can convey messages to them in the language they understand and provide solutions that appear to be tailored to meeting their needs.
Defining buyer personas becomes very useful when buying paid advertising on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook. These platforms allow you to create highly targeted advertising for a very specific audience.
As a result, the more you know about who you want to target and where with what messages, the more effective your advertising campaign is going to be.
What are some examples of buyer personas?
Creating detailed buyer personas is a crucial step in understanding your customers and tailoring your sales strategy. Here are some examples of buyer personas for small businesses:
Example 1: The busy professional
Demographics: Age 30 to 45, full-time employed, earns £40,000 to £60,000 a year.
Needs: Convenient, time-saving products or services that fit into their hectic schedule.
Buying habits: Prefers online shopping, values fast delivery and looks for solutions to save time.
Pain points: Struggles to find reliable services that work outside standard hours.
Example business fit: A meal delivery service targeting busy urban workers who want healthy, ready-to-eat meals.
Example 2: The eco-conscious shopper
Demographics: Age 25 to 35, single or partnered, mid-range income.
Needs: Sustainable, eco-friendly products that match their environmental values.
Buying habits: Researches brands extensively, prefers locally sourced or organic options and is willing to pay a premium for sustainability.
Pain points: Difficulty finding genuinely eco-friendly products with transparent sourcing.
Example business fit: An independent shop selling handmade, plastic-free household goods.
Example 3: The tech-savvy parent
Demographics: Age 35 to 50, married, two children, middle to upper-middle income.
Needs: High-quality products for their family, especially items that simplify parenting or offer educational value.
Buying habits: Comfortable with technology, often shops online, reads reviews and values reliability and safety.
Pain points: Overwhelmed by the sheer number of product options and wary of false advertising.
Example business fit: A subscription box service offering educational toys and resources for kids.
Example 4: The local community supporter
Demographics: Age 50+, retired or semi-retired, stable income.
Needs: Personalised service and the satisfaction of supporting small, local businesses.
Buying habits: Prefers in-store shopping, values face-to-face interactions and is loyal to businesses that prioritise relationships.
Pain points: Frustrated by large, impersonal retail chains and poor customer service.
Example business fit: A family-run café or artisan bakery in a small town.
Key takeaways
Buyer personas are more than just an exercise in imagination – they're a powerful tool to align your marketing and sales strategies with your customers' needs and expectations.
By defining these semi-fictional characters, you're laying the groundwork for effective, targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive results.
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