Do you think you truly know who your customers are? Do you know what they are trying to accomplish when buying your product? What drives their behaviour? How they think? How they buy? Why they make buying decisions? And when?
That’s a lot of questions, but that is exactly what buyer persona is all about, and it’s something you must take into consideration if you want to set your business up for success.
So how exactly does it set your business up for success you ask? Well it’s simple really. It provides insight you might not have thought of otherwise and the better aligned your product is to the interests, needs and wants of your customer, the greater the chance you’ll see better results in the form of increased sales! But not just sales, also in terms of customer longevity, customer referrals, etc. too.
Of course there are many different types of customers in the marketplace, all with specific and very individual needs and wants. And it isn’t reasonable to expect that you should know the intricate details of each and every one of them (unless you’ve only got a handful – in which case, you’d better be across all of them – down to what they eat for breakfast).
But if you’re very clear about your ideal customer(s) and create a buyer persona around that, then you and your business will do well. You don’t have to have lots of them – and if you’ve got a small business, the fewer the better (otherwise you might find yourself and your marketing efforts spread too thin).
So what exactly is a buyer persona? In short, it’s a semi-fictional characterisation of your ideal customer groups.
Creating buyer personas;
- Demographic information (age, gender, income, location, family/marital status, career)
- Values (primary and secondary values – this is a judgement call on your part, but if you think about it, you’ll know what drives these people).
- Goals (career aspirations, team aspirations, family aspirations, personal aspirations)
- Personality traits (are they aggressive, too the point, quiet, funny, talkative, detail-obsessed, etc.)
- Behaviour patterns (communication preferences, best time for you to call, where you’re likely to meet them)
- Obstacles (what are their pain points in the sphere you can help with)
- What can you help with – that will help achieve their goals, i.e.: how do you help them overcome their obstacles?
- What have they said in the past – as much as possible use the words they’d use when talking to you. Customer research helps here.
- What are the common objections they give you as to why they’re not buying
- Marketing message – what words do you use to describe your solution to their obstacle (this will likely change for each persona)
- What’s your pitch? Put what you can help with, the obstacle, what they’ve said in the past, the opposite to their objection and your marketing message together and voila – that’s your pitch.
You can even create negative buyer personas for the clients/customers that you don’t want to work with so you can better recognise them before spending hours jumping through hoops to no avail.
Stay tuned for the next installment of buyer personas, as we’ll take you through 4 examples that you might be able to tweak for your own business.
If we can help you with creating buyer personas or help you get to grips with why your customers really buy from you and what makes them come back to buy from you again and again, we have a process for that and we’d love to talk you though it. You can always give us a call (02) 9994 8005 or drop us a note.
