How much do you really know about customers? What do they have in common? What are their personas?
Buyer personas are fictional, simplified representations of your ideal customers. These personas can help you understand and identify the people you are trying to attract. For example, how old is your ideal customer? Which city do they live in? What do they do for a living and what is their approximate salary? Are they married? What about kids? What do they like to do for fun?
The questions above help build your buyer personas and help you view your customers as real humans by better understanding their wants and needs. This enables you to better tailor your marketing content and messaging (not to mention your product or service offerings) to reach them. Thus you increase brand awareness and sales.
To begin developing a buyer persona for your business, consider the following:
- Research your target audience through interviews, surveys and observations.
- When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important personal information. Pull insights from the information collected.
- Be open to what your sales team has to say- what does the feedback on the leads they interact with say about the costumers you serve?
Once you have finished collecting data, use your research to identify patterns and commonalities from the answers to your interview questions. Then develop at least one primary persona based on these results, and finally share that persona with the rest of the company.
Customers like being heard, and interviewing them gives them a chance to tell you about their interests, their challenges, and what they think of your product or service. Customers also like to have an impact on the products they use, so you may find that, as you involve them in interviews like this, they become even more loyal to your company.
For small businesses especially, buyer personas are useful because they help you interact with customers on a personal level. This engagement has a significant impact on overall success since you have the opportunity to build brand loyalty.
Need help getting started? Contact us and we’ll help you identify your ideal customers and how you can find them.
