What are Buyer Personas and Key Reasons Why Your Business Need Them

This is why buyer personas were born!  Developing buyer personas for your brand allows you to build an entire content strategy to attracting qualified, ideal customers to your business.   With inbound marketing being the best way to doing business online, establishing your buyer personas are crucial to being effective in your marketing.

Before sharing the key reasons as to why you need buyer personas and ways you can develop them for your business, let’s explore exactly what buyer personas are and what it entails.

What Are Buyer Personas?

Buyer personas goes more in depth than your traditional demographics information included in target audience research.  The Content Marketing Institute defines persona as:

“a composite sketch of a target market based on validated commonalities – not assumptions – that informs content strategy to drive productive buyer engagement.”

Therefore, a buyer persona includes data like:

• Job description and responsibilities
• Their role in the buying process
• Problems and concerns they’re experiencing
• Pain Points
• Their Typical Day
• Most impressing questions
• Keywords and phrases this persona is likely to use when searching online
• Their content preferences (i.e. the social media channels they prefer, what content format engages them more, etc.)
• Goals and objectives

These details allows you to create a clear picture of exactly what your audience looks like, giving you concrete and resourceful information that allows for creating quality, engaging content that resonates with your buyer.

Key Reasons Why It’s Important to Develop Buyer Personas

Developing buyer personas bolsters your entire marketing efforts.  It is the foundation to your inbound marketing which includes your content strategy.  Not taking the time to create your personas will leave you frustrated with lack of results in your engagement, lead conversions, and sales.

Here are a few more important reasons why your business should embrace buyer personas in your inbound marketing strategy:

• Tailor your content that resonates with your customer…making your marketing more effective, engaging, and successful
• It’s actually easier to create relevant content when you write it for a single human being
• Successful brands like American Express, Hubspot, Apple, Seventeen Magazine, and Procter & Gamble all use buyer personas to their amazing advantage (Source: Hubspot)
• It humanizes your customers…makes your customers real
• It helps you get crystal clear on their problems, what they value, the obstacles they experience and how you could be a success for them
• Your content will convert much better

Suggestive Best Practices to Follow When Creating Your Buyer Personas

Now that you’re convinced that your brand will excel using buyer personas, check out the following tips and best practices to consider when creating your personas:

#1 Check your site analytics

See where your visitors are coming from, what keywords they used to find you, and how long they spent once they arrived.  This will uncover the desires that led your audience to your site as well as the tools they used to get there

#2 Get your team involved in creating profiles

Anyone with interactions with customers and customer data should be involved in sharing their perspective on what drives your customers

#3 Social media research

Use social media listening to find your potential customers asking questions or airing problems your product can solve on any of the social channels

#4 Survey and Interview your customers

Personas can also be created through research, surveys, and interviews.  This would include your current customers, prospects, and those outside your contacts database who might align with your ideal audience

#5 Use a Template

Once you’ve gathered your research, use a template to fill out the details of your new buyer persona.  Be sure to give him or her a name!

Conclusion

Inbound marketing is hands down one of the most effective strategies to attracting prospects for your brand online.  It’s crucial that your business takes the steps to shift your customer research to buyer personas for a strong content strategy.  Using personas will position you to connect deeply with your audience that increases engagement, conversions, grows your business and builds excitement around your brand!