The buyer persona is a profile or archetype of one or more ideal clients for our business. In it, we focus on the qualities of this fictional individual: who he is, what his motivations are, his needs, and his behaviors.
This profile -or profiles- is an essential document for our company or business as it will allow us to streamline various processes, make them better and make more sales.
And more if you want to implement an inbound marketing strategy or you are a business that is dedicated to selling to other companies or businesses (business to business aka B2B).
What is the profile of the buyer or buyer person?
The buyer persona is a profile of an ideal and fictitious buyer. It is an archetype whose objective is to provide us with the greatest amount of information to establish our approach to the client. You can have more than one buyer persona profile depending on your company or business, but we do not recommend having more than 5.
One of the characteristics that we always highlight about inbound is super customization. What is inbound marketing and What is the reason that everyone talking about it? That is why our buyer persona must be created more than with expectations with real data from your users, buyers, and clients.
Although you can indeed create a buyer persona for a client that you would like to sell or have, the reality is that a buyer persona needs to be trained through real data, which you cannot obtain if you do not carry out a study or if you have not had experience with any of these clients.
Let's think of the buyer persona as a filter and as the result of a filter. That is when you do internet marketing -and especially if you do it very well- all kinds of users will likely reach you, from those who have a clear intention to buy from you to those who had to do a task and you appeared to them by accident.
The Internet is infinite and not everyone who visits your page will want to buy from you or enter your funnel or sales funnel. However, of those who do, not all reach the conversion or closure process at the same time or in the same way.
And so, you have certain users doing immediate conversions, others having a longer process; others answering calls; others feeling more comfortable answering emails, etc.
But that does not stop there. Believe it or not, all those users who end up being your customers share characteristics among themselves, which influence their decision-making. All this information is what we will use to create our buyer persona profiles, enrich them and make our strategies more effective.
What is a buyer persona for?
Buyer persona profiles help us to profile our clients, filter them, qualify them and nurture them in a better way. However, this goes beyond reducing your audience to a series of geographical and social elements such as age, marital status, and gender.
The objective of these profiles is to create one or more characters that represent our ideal clients, that is, they are the closest thing to those prospects who become our clients. Representations that tell us what their needs are - or pains as we would say in marketing - to present how we can help them with our service or product to solve it.
That is why the buyer person should not be confused with the target. A target or target audience is a reduction made up of socio-economic conditions such as gender, age, education, geographical location, and purchasing power, which despite being specific in the end ends up being very general.
It is very common to use the term target in marketing, and there is nothing wrong with it. When you are launching an information-gathering campaign to create a specific audience, it is very common to create general audiences. Facebook works similarly, the difference is that in inbound marketing our goal is to make the user fall in love, and to do so we need to know-how.
A target is hardly going to tell us the user's needs, the type of information they like to consume, or how they do it, their goals, objectives, and fears. That is why buyer personas are so important to our company since they allow us to have greater clarity about who we are dealing with and what we can offer or what we can avoid.
The buyer persona in inbound marketing:
It is clear to us that not all leads can be our clients. Even when there is a genuine interest in being one, not all incoming leads will be qualified or will finish the purchase process. Personal buyers help us identify those who will.
Throughout your experience with your company, you have surely come across clients who share certain characteristics and needs. Same that help you better understand how to approach them, how to sell them, and how to help them in a better way.
Has it happened to you that a prospect comes to your business and with three questions you realize that you cannot help them? Either because they don't have the budget or because the services you offer are not adequate to meet their needs. Whatever your company, you have surely also been in a situation when you meet a prospect and immediately have an idea of what they want or how you should deal with them.
This mental filter that you do is a crude example of the purpose and operation of buyer personas since in inbound these profiles help us understand what kind of strategies to design to attract the customers we want.
Among the most important proposals of inbound marketing are mega personalization and automation. We all want to feel special and unique, but we know that it is not possible to customize thousands and thousands of emails and content for your audience.
Buyer personas are a tool that can solve that for you. But it goes beyond that.
The buyer persona to create content:
One of the uses of buyer personas is to create content.
You will surely remember our tips on content marketing to succeed on the Internet and the importance of these in capturing the attention of prospects. In short, what we achieve with content positioning is to cover certain topics aka keywords so that when a user is searching for them on the Internet, our content is among the first to appear.
But making these contents not only has to do with keyword research and the words in which we want to position ourselves, but they must also capture the attention of people who are willing to buy from us.
And as you know, not all of us consume information in the same way. Some people feel more comfortable reading than watching a video, others prefer infographics and there will be those who find a podcast more productive and easier than being on the Internet reading.
These characteristics are impossible to cover in each client. Yes, we are all different but if we made a profile for each user who visits you we will never end. Therefore, although personal buyers are more specialized profiles, in the end, they end up being an approximation or guide to have a better understanding of who is buying from you to choose a way to be able to sell and create content for them.
And above all, because we are not all in the same place at the funnel, and we do not have the same behaviors when making a purchase decision. For example, there will be prospects who are not afraid to buy and pay while others think about it much more because they must be super sure before making a decision.
Having a personal buyer's document with these agrotypes and their characteristics will help you to structure content that speaks specifically to them. To create a voice and message that appeal to your problems - or pain - and grab your attention.
The buyer person to filter prospects:
In the same way, buyer personas are a filter for both your marketing and sales teams, especially when you are using a CRM.
It is very common for CRM to sneak into the conversation when talking about inbound marketing. Above all, because it is a tool that can facilitate, as its name implies, the management of the relationship you maintain with your leads and customers. However, one of the advantages of implementing a CRM is being able to have and manage your sales team and your marketing team in the same space so that their interests, actions, and strategies are directed towards growing your business.
And we know that both teams have different strategies and interests. Sales are interested in seeing results and marketing is more interested in nutrition processes and preparing those leads.
And that is why I mention all of the above - in the wise words of Elle Woods, "I have a point" - because buyer persona is a great complement to better intertwine the activities, strategies, and objectives of your marketing and sales teams. . And to filter and nurture customers.
We know that you are no longer wondering what is a CRM and why do I need one? And surely you already have one or two options in your sights. But in case doubt remains, a CRM is a tool that helps you automate both your marketing and sales processes.
Using this tool allows you to have greater control and understanding of what you are doing in your company: the strategies that bring you more leads, the stages of your funnel where you are losing more prospects, the channels where leads respond better, etc. And in turn, it allows you to create filter your leads according to the type of buyer person that this is.
How?
An easy way to do this is through questionnaires. From the moment your lead gives you their data, you can filter it through the buyer persona. You will need more information but this is the first step, that is why it is super important that your buyer personas are very rich in data. You do not need to ask very difficult questions, depending on the type of business you have -and your buyer's person- you can ask them, for example, what is their position in the company.
How do I create my buyer persona?
To create your buyer persona you must consider the following fields:
1. Personal history
2. Work history
3. Consumption habits
4. goals
5. Challenges
Who is this customer or lead? What is their age range? Is he married or single? Is he a man or a woman?
When creating the personal history of your buyers, it is important to focus on the socio-cultural characteristics that we mention: age, sex, gender, marital status, etc. This is important since it will allow you to have a clearer idea of who you are describing, and it will give you a starting point to continue making your profile.
Remember, data is super important, so take a look at your customers and find out what they have in common. We will make an example so that you can also put it into practice.
Suppose I have an Event Organization company. I do weddings, XV's years, corporate events, baptisms, etc. You can imagine that in my insurance company I have different personal buyers because I have many types of events, however, some meet the same characteristics.
That is why you mustn't have more than 5. You can have the ones you want and the ones you need but many times in our desire to hyper-specialized we end up damaging our process and we have 2 or 3 person buyers who could well be one. We are going to create two to make a comparison table.
Let's suppose that two of my big clients are the brides and the mothers of the brides or celebrates. The difference for my company is that the bride has all the control in making decisions, while with the moms, even if the brides or their children want and have certain requests, how they will pay because, in the end, they have the last word.
Do you see? Do the same exercise with me, obviously implementing it in your company. The next thing is to name your buyer persona. Now that you have my two clients in mind, think of a name that suits them, I chose X and Y.
Work history:
What is your education? What is the position you occupy in the company? What is the area in which you work? How long have you been in the company?
Now that you have the personal background of your buyers you must get their work history. This will depend on your business type. In the case of my example, as I am more interested in providing a business to customer service, perhaps the work history may be part of your background.
The work history will help you better understand - depending on your business- decision-making, for example, obviously a CEO is not going to think in the same way as the employee in the marketing area or the director of human resources and not a prospect. You will have the same concerns when you are a recent graduate as when you have been with the company for 10 years.
Consumption habits:
How do you feel more comfortable with a call or email? Do you prefer messages that appeal to emotion or those with numbers and data? Is it more visual? Is it more auditory? What was your way of contacting us: Facebook, call, saw us in an ad, etc.?
This field is very important since a large part of the content and the approach that we will have with the lead will be guided by how the lead prefers to be contacted, the type of content it consumes, and the information or pitch that we must apply with it. For example, we are not going to speak to Fernanda in the same way as Doña Gaby, or through the same channels.
Goals:
What do you want to achieve with our services? What is the purchase intention? What are your needs or pains?
This is the field that may be most difficult for you, but it is one of the ones that most help us to identify how we can help you solve your problem, pain, or need.
Knowing what the objectives of your purchase are opens the way for us to know then how we can offer it to you and understand what you are looking for from us.
Challenges:
What are the difficulties that our prospect finds to meet his objectives? What are his complaints? What are his fears?
The challenges, as well as the objectives, are important to understand who and what we are dealing with and the obstacles that we may encounter along the way during the purchase process.
At the same time, the challenges help us to have a general idea of what are the negative aspects that we can expect from each client, for example, those who are stingy or who tend to be very late with payments, etc.
A tip that we can give you is to put images to your buyer persona so that you have a clearer idea of who he is. It does not necessarily have to be a photo; it can be illustrations. And obviously, they don't necessarily have to look the same.
There will be clients who enter your categories but do not comply with an element, for example, an “X” who is 22 years old or a “Y” who is married. These variations are normal. What we want you to understand is that buyer personas are elements that will give you a realistic approach to your customers, what they expect from your services, and what you must take into account to provide them with a better service.
So run to do an analysis of your previous clients and start creating your buyer persona, we assure you that it will be an improvement for your digital marketing strategies and your sales team.
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