Once you understood how to do a customer segmentation, the next step is to learn how to create a Buyer Persona template for each customer group you identify. Analyze them and make a clear description of your ideal client in each segment. This step will help you better understand for whom we are building your product/services, who is our ideal customer.
Table of Contents
What is a Buyer Persona?
A Buyer Persona is the personification of your ideal customer from a specific customer segment. It is a written description of all the traits your ideal customer has. It is like making a page profile, on a social media platform, with all the relevant information: Where she/he lives?; Where she/he eats?; What she/he eats?; What job she/he has?; What is the marital status?; What is the educational level?; Etc.
Why is important for your business to know how to create a Buyer Persona template?
It is important to do these steps because, depending on the result, you will need to adapt your marketing strategy in order to reach out the right people. Adapting your Marketing strategy it means that after creating the Buyer Persona, you will need to adapt your message, your communication channels, you brand associations, your pricing strategy or even the packaging. In the same time, is vital for developing your product to know whom to ask for feedback. What client to lesson when it comes of the attribute that your product should have?
How to create a Buyer Persona template?
I think the best way of developing a Buyer persona is to see it as a new friendship relation. With every interaction you are looking to get to know better the other person (the customer in this case), and have a clearer view of the traits and values that person has.
Depending on your development stage, you can build a Buyer Persona using the following methods:
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By studying your competitors
With this approach you should do observations labs. Simply observe the surrounding and the conditions in which the client of your competitors are buying. From where do they buy?; When do they buy?; Why do they buy?; Who are they?; Where do they live?; What do they do before buying?; What do they do after buying?; What route do they take?; etc.
It is important to remember that these customers would be a temporary Buyer Persona, because in order to create it, you had done some assumption. For the moment you are just making the assumption that they will buy from you too. You don’t know yet if this is true or not. This is why you will need to taste your assumption, and adapt your description once you lunch your product.
Ideally, talk with this people as well, ask them the questions enumerated above.
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Lead generation
The second way, would be to use the method develop by Daniel Priestley for generating leads. He argues that one of the best ways to test if your idea will have enough traction is by following 2 simple steps:
First, you need to develop a series of 3-4 meetings, that have as main scope the education and informing of your potential customers. You can do this online, or offline.
For example, if you are thinking of building a fitness app, and you want to test if you may have traction for your business, you may design a series of free online meetings, to educate the potential customers about the benefits of making regular activities, or the benefits of monitoring your activity.
The KPI for this activity would be to test if from one meeting to another you will have bigger attendance. If at the first meeting are coming 10 people, then 20, then 50, you are on the right track.
! You don’t need to sell anything. Just inform, create real value added, and see if people are really interested in the subject.Second, create a scorecard, and test the rate of engagement between the persons that attend your free sessions.
Create a scorecard with the title: “Test how actively you are?”. Create a series of questions that can measure these levels. Promote them and see how many people will take this test.All the people that will answer your survey, will become leads and potential clients.
After that, you just need to send them a newsletter with the title: “You score card is at 45%. If you want to improve your score, to 75% in 3 months, download the app!”.
You can test the Scorecard approach using the software Daniel Priestley and his team develop.
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Data analysis of current customers
If you already had started the business, would be best to start building your Buyer Personas starting with the customers that you already have. Ideally, you will need one Buyer Persona for every Business Segment. You can do these by leveraging the technology that all of us have access to it: Google Analytics, Meta Business, etc. In the same time, it will apply to connect the dots from these analytical tools, using real stories.
We can find the best stories about your existing clients at your employees that are directly facing the customer (sales persons, customer support, service, etc.).
It is important to have a clear picture of your ideal client, but, keep in mind, it is of equal importance to know who is not your client!
Your success will widely be determined by the relation that you build with your customer, by the feedback that you can take from them and implement to improve your product. It is of crucial importance to know what clients you should listen and what clients you should ignore. In order for you to build a brand, and to create customer relations that last, you need to focus on customer segments and Buyer Personas and build your product and services around them.
Example
For example, if you are making furniture, it is not relevant if 1000 students like your Instagram post. They will not be your clients, they are not buying furniture.
Another example, if you are producing or selling luxury product, the chances are that you will receive a lot of comments like the following one: “It is too expensive, why is so expensive?”. To be considered luxury, one of the main criteria is to be expensive. If someone will ask you “Why is it so expensive?”, you don’t need to lower the price of your product or service. You just need to understand that the person who made these comment is not in your customer target, and you still need to work on improving your targeting.
Negative Buyer Personas
Build a Negative Buyer Personas as well! I’m not saying that you are forbidden to sell to the customers that are outside of your target. It’s just that you don’t need to take the feedback that they are providing into consideration when you develop your product, when you are trying to scale up or when you are doing the communication strategy. (From my experience, usually, they bring more work than business, and would be better to just filter them out with you targeting strategy).
Common mistakes that you need to avoid when trying to learn how to create a Buyer Persona template!
- Don’t build your Buyer Persona basset on stereotypes!
- Don’t build your Buyer Persona basset on assumption, unless you know how to design a way to test those assumptions.
- Don’t build your Buyer Persona basset just on geographical characteristics. Focus rather on their needs, pain points, frustrations, source of joy, biases and how they are making purchase decisions.
How to use a Buyer Personas template?
We will use the Buyer Personas that you have just created to:
- Build Marketing Messages that are targeting directly your main audience.
- Build brand awareness by finding brand with common values and common customer target with which you can associate (in the sense that you can communicate together, or to build value for your customer, like creating an event, an educational platform, or by sponsoring something that your common customer target sees value in).
- Better Targeting your online advertising.
- Know what clients to ask for feedback.
- Build a community around the lifestyle, passions, or pinpoints of our customers.
- Build relations that last.
Conclusions
Keep in mind that this process should be a continues activity. The Buyer Personas should become more descriptive in time, once you know your clients better and better. Revise and test all the traits of your customers periodically, against the data that you will accumulate over time.
Also, always be aware of the fact that being an entrepreneur, means having a mind set for continues learning. No matter if you are just starting on this path, or you already have 10 years of experience.
The knowledge in this article should be a good starting point, unless you know better. If you do, please share with us. I would be grateful to hear your feedback and to find ways to improve my knowledge!
Additional resources
Download the free Buyer Persona template here!
