What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your target customer. Creating buyer personas will help you define your customer’s unique pain points, which is critical to defining an effective strategy to sell your product or service to them. Understanding your customer will make it a lot easier for you to deliver content that will fulfill their specific needs and solve their unique challenges.
Creating detailed and targeted buyer personas will have a tremendous impact on the following areas of your marketing strategy:
Product/Service
It helps with product innovation and development. What solutions can you deliver to each of your personas that specifically pertain to their unique challenges. Targets would include designers, contractors, architects, specifying engineers and facility owners?
Copywriting
How should you communicate with your designer audience as opposed to your contractor audience? In what way should your product solutions or services be described to attract and convert a specific persona?
For example, contractors might care more about how your product will reduce labor costs and save installation time, whereas a designer might care more about comfort, aesthetics and sustainability. Understanding what each persona cares about will help you craft your marketing message in a way that will resonate with your customer.
Email Marketing
Which persona should receive one type of email marketing campaign versus another? Understanding each persona will ensure you target them with the right email offer.
SEO
Understanding your target audience will help you understand the search demand landscape, so you can craft more optimal SEO strategies. What is your target audience searching for? What problems are they trying to solve?
Content Marketing
What lead magnets, blog posts, videos, webinars, case studies, whitepapers should be created to compel each avatar to buy?
For example, if you plan a campaign on “How UV technology can reduce maintenance costs,” you don’t want to target the installer with the same whitepaper as you would offer a facility maintenance manager.
Social media marketing
Which social media platforms are the most important to run ads on? Understanding where your target audience consumes information is very important.
For example, our research shows that engineers find great value watching tutorials and industry-related videos on YouTube; therefore, we know to target your engineering audience with a YouTube ad.
Is it true that you prefer to purchase products and services from a company that you trust?
Yes, of course, and it’s no different for your target customer. Developing trust with your audience takes time, and the best way to start is to show them that you understand them well — maybe better than they understand themselves. You know what their challenges, pain points, and goals are. You know what they like to read, to which associations they belong to, and what platforms they use to connect with their peers and consume information.
If you know all of the above, you will be well on your way to convert your ideal prospects into long-term customers.
Now that you have completed your buyer persona, you can use this valuable information to create more effective, more personalized advertising campaigns. Through your research, you established who your buyer is, unique characteristics about them as individuals in their industry, and what challenges they face.
This strategy guide can help you better understand how to leverage your buyer persona in effective advertising campaigns.