Why and How to create a buyer persona

Every industry or business has their target audience or customer that they want to reach. These conclusions are reached after considering existing customers and the current market environment. You want to develop a buyer persona for several reasons, most importantly to construct an effective content marketing strategy.

The importance of well-rounded buyer persona is the link that binds your content together. You must clearly define your target customer(s). Here is an overview of steps to approach the process.

Incorporate research conducted on the main demographics of how we categorize people i.e.: Gender, Location, Age. This is the starting point to begin fleshing out your ideal customer. Where do they live, what is their age, what is their average salary etc.

Develop an understanding of their background. What is their occupation, what industry do they work in, are they married/single/have children, what kind of hobbies do they enjoy etc. Try to carve out personality traits that can be drivers for creating content that is relevant to them.

The best way to start formulating or revamping your buyer persona is to review your previous customer information and demographics.

This is also helpful when narrowing the focus more specifically; conduct interviews to get more in depth insights to your customer’s needs and wants. You can conduct surveys to cast a wide net and go from there.

Discover their motivations, by posing WHY questions. Determine what their goals and challenges are. This type of analysis is important to help construct content that is useful to the customer. For example: If one of your customer’s challenges is finding time saving technology, you can create content that is geared towards ‘simple tech’ or easy how to guides, and most importantly how your product or service streamlines tasks, and saves time.

Research the decision making process in the ‘buyers journey.’ This is where you evaluate what effects their selection process, and how they go about making a selection. What buying methods are they utilizing? For example: Are they conducting research and purchasing primarily on their mobile device? If so how does this impact your content distribution strategy? Also a relevant factor is to ask WHO is influencing the buyer, is there a specific celebrity, movement, or trend effecting their preferences.

What are the Benefits?

Content Marketing Strategy. The number one benefit of buyer personas is giving you the information necessary to form a targeted content strategy. This entails the creation of content and how you will publish and distribute it. When you have set considerations this allows for strategic messaging and an aimed sales approach.

Provides organizational benefits and cohesion. By developing and sharing buyer personas with your whole organization, everyone can be in the know, enhancing the customer experience, satisfaction, and retention rates. When all team members have a well-developed understanding of the buyer persona it unifies the higher objectives.

Saves time and money. By focusing in on your target customers, you can save money with advertisement, especially on social media.

Product Development and growth. When restructuring or creating new features, buyer personas are extremely helpful. They enable you to address the customer’s needs and wants, and answer their challenges in new products or designs. Take into consideration how you fit within the industry, if there are any gaps that can be filled.

Thoroughly formulating your buyer persona is essential for the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, vitality of your business and ROI. Also with changing markets it is advised to consistently research and revise your personas, as to maintain a relevant understanding is always key.

Once you have these elements in place you can create content and start sharing! The Limber platform allows you to expand your reach and efficiency when you are ready to implement your content marketing actions.