Create and use the perfect buyer persona [Instructions]

What is a buyer persona?

The difference between buyer persona and target group

The online reference work Wikipedia defines a target group as "... a certain set of market participants who react more homogeneously to communication policy measures than the market as a whole. The basis for target group identification according to relevant characteristics is market segmentation."

Sounds pretty complicated, doesn't it?

Put simply, defining a target group allows the entire market to be narrowed down according to certain criteria. A target group is therefore a subset of the entire market. It is a specific subset that you ideally want to address with your product, your offer or your website.

The target group can be defined using various criteria, such as

• by actions
• according to socio-demographics
• according to psychological characteristics

By determining a target group, you can usefully narrow down your potential market as a first step. However, there is still a major problem, because the members of this target group are a very idealised, homogeneous "mass".

This means that all people in this target group have the same characteristics and share the same interests and needs. You can also compare them to NPCs (non-playable characters) in older video games that do the same thing over and over again.

However, this does not reflect reality, because every person is an individual, characterised by their environment, their experiences, their milieu.

This means for you: You can certainly appeal to some people in your chosen target group, however your marketing campaign or the right content is still a shot in the dark. You hope to reach as many people as possible. But that is not certain.

The buyer persona method is a further development of this target group concept that gives potential customers a face - and much more.

The buyer persona narrows down your target group further and helps you to really get to know potential customers.

Buyer personas are fictitious representatives of your target group, but based on real research and conversations. Intrinsic characteristics, i.e. characteristics that come from within, are now added to the obvious, clearly recognisable characteristics.

What makes my customer special? What does he or she want to achieve? What drives him or her? What scares him or her? What satisfies him or her? What are they striving for?

It is questions like these that turn a faceless member of a homogeneous target group into a supposedly "real person". This method will help you to really understand the needs of your target group and to really address your customers with suitable measures.

Why you should focus on a buyer persona

Wondering why you should create and use a buyer persona? Here are the most important answers:

• Because personas allow you to tailor your copywriting, blog articles, landing page copy and all your content marketing to your target audience.
• Because you will generate more leads and sell more as a result.
• Because your copywriting will do exactly what it's meant to do. Sell. Influence. Encourage a specific action.
• And because the aim of content marketing is to draw the prospect deeper and deeper into the sales funnel.
• The concept also helps you to build a basis of trust and a relationship with the person in question and establish yourself as an expert.

In order to create an effective content strategy and design your advertising copy accordingly, you need to know your target group inside out.

You need to know what the desired customer needs. You need to know their needs. Only then can you influence their buying behaviour.

But even more importantly, you need to know the needs, desires, worries and fears behind the needs of your ideal customer. They are what trigger the greatest desire, and therefore the impulse to buy, in your reader.

Your advertising copy must then convey that the product or service you are writing about is exactly what the prospective customer needs to satisfy their greatest desire. This is the secret of every successful sales and business model, both online and offline.

That's why you need buyer personas.

The 5 biggest advantages of the persona method at a glance

Before we get straight down to work, I would like to explain the biggest advantages of the concept. You should always keep them in mind when creating your own personas.

• You know who your customers are. You know their wishes, needs and problems. As a result, you also know how you can best reach potential customers.
• You and your company are therefore a huge step ahead of the competition, who are sometimes vying for the same customers as you.
• You can offer the right solutions in a targeted manner. Your marketing measures and content are targeted precisely and are geared exactly to the needs of your customers.
• You generate more leads.
• You work faster and more efficiently. This not only saves you a lot of time, but also money.

As you can see, in order to write your advertising message as precisely as possible for your target group and give your content strategy a precise direction, you should definitely create a buyer persona. I would now like to show you how this works in five steps.

Creating buyer personas in 5 steps

The following steps are relatively easy to carry out, but difficult to master. So take your time.

The better and more accurately you create your buyer personas, the more targeted your content will be.

For each of these 5 steps, I also have a little tip for you - as a small service - to help you create the individual personas even more effectively.

Step 1: Think about the characteristics of your buyer persona

People tend to be influenced by their emotions when making decisions - including purchasing decisions.

The aim when creating buyer personas is to create a customer that is as realistic as possible, with all the characteristics that make up a person.

The first step is to put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. Here are a few examples. As you imagine yourself as one of these customers or sample customers, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• What are my goals, dreams and visions?
• What are my worries and problems?
• Where do I live?
• Age, gender, marital status, children?
• What level of education do I have? What training do I have?
• What is my cultural background?
• Am I more modern or conservative?
• Am I a risk-taker or security-conscious?
• What are my beliefs and values?
• What is my monthly or annual income?
• What is my general mental/emotional state? (Self-esteem, introvert/extrovert...)
• What about my abilities?
• How do I see myself?
• What are my habits?
• ..

Continue this list until you are completely familiar with your persona as an individual.

Step 2: Think about what really makes your buyer persona tick.

In the next step, you need to think about what makes your persona tick in relation to your services or your offer.

You should ask these questions:

• Why is your persona looking for a solution?
• What solution are they looking for (cheap, fast, high quality...)?
• What is their general purchasing behaviour (customer journey)?
• At which touchpoints are they located?
• Where in the sales funnel?
• What benefit/advantage do they expect from a solution (for themselves, for the company)?
• What is particularly important to them when making a purchase?
• What objections could prevent them from making a purchase and what answers do you have for this case?

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Step 3: Research on the internet

The third step is extensive internet research. You now know the ideal buyer for your offer.

Now search the internet (relevant forums, Facebook, Twitter...) to get to know their problems and needs even better. The various social media platforms are particularly suitable for this.

You should also find out seemingly trivial things. Sometimes it is precisely this trivial information that is of particular importance.

For example, the question of what your target customer likes to eat.

Doesn't seem that important. Right?

Now imagine you're writing an advertising text as part of an email marketing campaign.

You know that your target customer likes to eat traditional Italian food.

What effect will a message have if it looks something like this?

Step 4: Optimise through customer interviews

You can complete the first three steps largely on your own. All you need is a mobile phone, a tablet or a desktop computer. And time, of course. But how effective have the research and considerations actually been so far?

We are looking for a typical customer or prospective customer with all their advantages and disadvantages, but above all with their very own feelings and preferences. With special needs and motivations, goals and problems, dislikes and desires, but also moral concepts and values.

To create a complete persona, you therefore need specific, high-quality data. Our research and considerations have now given us a framework that we can adhere to.

This framework has been defined by ourselves, perhaps based on our previous experience, perhaps based on the history of our company to date. Now it is a matter of fine tuning within this framework.

To increase the accuracy of your buyer persona description, you can interview your existing customers or those who are not (yet) part of your customer base.

Personal interviews with real people are a wonderful way to obtain high-quality data sets.

Put together a guide for this purpose, which also contains a corresponding catalogue of questions. This catalogue of questions should cover the following areas:

However, make sure that you don't just rattle off your catalogue of questions in the interview situation. A guideline is important, but it should be exactly that: a guideline that gives you a certain direction without forcing you into a corset.

Think of the interview less as an interrogation and more as a conversation.

You are looking for emotions, which means: try to really understand your interviewee. Interposed questions are expressly permitted. Ask about the "why" and "wherefore", and also about the "how" if the course of the conversation demands it.

Once you have collected enough material, you can analyse the information you have received for common patterns and characteristics. Are there similarities? Are there connections? This information now forms the basis for fine-tuning your buyer persona.

Step 5: Define and refine the persona

Once you have collected and organised your data, the final step is to create the persona. You breathe life into your persona.

To bring it to life, all you have to do is put the characteristics on paper (or enter them in a text document).

Think of a suitable name and then write down the most important characteristics, special features and needs.

In addition to demographic information, you should include professional training, interests, professional activity, relationship status, living situation, needs, wishes, but also worries and fears.

A "typical quote" helps to make the persona even more human.

I have put together a fictitious example of a persona for you here. You can use it as a guide when creating your persona, but you are also welcome to add your own points. Don't forget: the more detailed you make the biography, the easier it will be for you to initiate the corresponding marketing and advertising measures.

How to generate more leads with the right buyer persona

Imagine you receive a message that you feel was written specifically for you and to solve your problem.

How will you react? Open and curious? Or dismissive?

I think I can save myself the answer.

In most cases, content aimed at the target group leads to a lead. Regardless of whether this is a purchase, a newsletter entry or any other reaction from the customer.

The trick is to address the ideal customer with your communication and pick them up on their customer journey.

Developing a buyer persona makes this much easier, as this marketing strategy allows you to precisely address the needs of the ideal customer at each touchpoint during their journey.

The buyer persona in the B2B and B2C sectors

If you work in the B2B sector (business to business), you have it a little easier. You know your customers and their companies. And so you can create your content very precisely for them.

Example of a B2B persona

In the B2C sector (business to customer), on the other hand, you are not familiar with every single buyer. So you have to think about what makes the ideal consumer for your offer tick.

And, as you already know by now, you can only influence their purchase decision if you know the habits of your persona and pick them up at the decisive touchpoints with your content.

Example of a B2C buyer persona

In both cases, B2B and B2C, you should therefore have at least one ideal target persona in mind when you write your blog posts, newsletters, emails and advertising copy or design your marketing strategy.

Use the buyer persona

From now on, everyone in the organisation should think about the persona when doing their job.

From marketing to delivery or execution.

Ideally, your imaginary customer has a face and everyone has a picture of it in their workplace.

This way, everyone knows who they are working for at the moment and focusses all their attention on them.

Here are a few more examples of how the persona is used in practice.

• Does your offer or service match your persona?
• Does your communication suit them?
• Have you adapted your advertising texts to them?
• The same applies to your content (blog articles, social media posts...).
• And you should even think about your buyer persona when packaging your product.

Do I need different buyer personas?

If you only have one product or only offer one service, then one persona is enough. Several buyer personas are appropriate if you have a broad product range and therefore target different groups or if you offer several services.

• Example 1 would be a car brand that has sports cars, SUVs, vans and small cars in its range.
• Example 2 could be a marketing agency that creates websites and web shops, carries out search engine optimisation and Google advertising and runs social media marketing.

How many buyer personas you need therefore depends on your offering.

Conclusion: Don't do without this important marketing tool

You can and should tailor your marketing strategies, especially your content marketing and advertising copy, to your target persona.

Online marketing is very different from the marketing of the past.

But the question of how to turn someone into a lead, a buyer, still remains.

Regardless of whether it is an individual potential customer or a company. The decision to buy is always made by a person, a human being.

And in 2021, we still need to influence the purchasing decisions of our target groups. Perhaps even more so than ever before, because the internet means that competition is greater than ever.

How do we do that? Through the content we create to describe and advertise our product.

And the best way to do this is with a detailed buyer persona.

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