Define Your Customers with Buyer Personas

Who are you trying to sell to? It might seem like an obvious question that every digital marketer, or every business for that matter, needs to ask themselves, but we’re still finding many businesses haven’t perfected what their ideal customer looks like.

The value of a persona

Buyer personas are a representation of this ideal customer and is based on real data and market research. It’s a thorough analysis rather than who you think represents your customer base. Creating a buyer persona will provide you with real insight into your current customers as well as whether your marketing strategy is working in the way that you want it to. You can use this information to put structure back into your marketing, helping you understand your weak spots and where you should be focusing your time, energy and money.

It’s a successful strategy for a reason, buyer personas allow you to attract the most valuable leads, visits and the right customers. After all, isn’t this what most businesses want? Take it from a retail perspective, an increase in footfall to your store is great but if no one buys anything because what’s inside doesn’t match their wants or needs, then something is going very wrong. You want to pull in the right customers who will walk into your store and find what they wanted, making a purchase.

If you’re getting lots of visits to your site and can’t understand why they’re not equating to conversions, one of the issues could be because your digital marketing isn’t reflecting what you sell so you are targeting the wrong customers. Creating a detailed buyer persona will help you understand your customers better, including their behaviour patterns and motivations, as well as their demographics, which you can use when setting up targeted ads. This will ensure you serve the right messages and position yourself where your customers expect you to be.

What does a buyer persona look like?

This is not just a description of your ideal customer. It’s not just marital status, age and location. A buyer persona goes deeper than that; it reveals insights into your customer’s attitudes, their decisions and what makes them pick or not pick your store over a competitor. This information comes from real data including customer feedback, reviews and engagement online. All of this can then be used to help you align your digital marketing to your customer’s expectations, building trust and increasing conversions.

How to use buyer personas

Buyer personas help you create and deliver the right messages and content that will appeal directly to your target audience. You can also use buyer personas to personalise your marketing, this is particularly effective if you have more than one buyer persona or sell a variety of products/services. Create mailing list segments or target specific audience groups through ads and tailor the content accordingly. It’s all about sending the right message to the right audience.

You can also use your buyer personas to perfect the customer journey. Create highly targeted content for each step of their journey. You can map this out according to the information you have on the typical journey a buyer takes.

Creating negative personas based on the customers you don’t want to attract can also help you deliver a more cost-effective marketing campaign. You can segment these negative personas and exclude them from your campaigns, resulting in a lower cost per customer.

If you need help putting together a marketing strategy around buyer personas, our digital marketing experts can deliver tailored campaigns and automations to suit your target audience. For more information email us at hello@5874marketing.co.uk or give us a call on 0121 369 5874.