What Is a Buyer Persona and Why It Matters

A digital marketing agency would study the target audience when developing a marketing strategy for a product or service and select the most suitable platforms and channels.
Digital marketing services use what is known as a buyer persona for this. A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents the target audience. When creating a buyer persona, a digital marketing team will study and collect data on the target audience looking at demographics and online behaviour. This data is complemented with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.
This information, typically collected through market research and data on existing customers, is used to create the buyer persona.

 

HOW SHOULD A BUSINESS USE A BUYER PERSONA?

A buyer persona gives a name and a face to the target audience a social media marketing company creates marketing campaigns for. One of the best uses of a buyer persona is that it enables teams to target ads in a more effective manner.
Marketing is a vast field and there are many options when it comes to sharing information about a product, service, or brand. Advertising, however, offers incredibly detailed targeting options and, once a business creates its buyer persona, it can create ads that speak directly to the target audience. Following this, a business can get the ad to the right people with the use of ad targeting.
A buyer persona will also allow an SEO marketing company to reframe its marketing strategies from the customer’s perspective. Marketing professionals often use technical terms, buzzwords, and corporate-speak in their content, and the meaning of these words is often lost on the customer or potential customer.
A marketer can avoid doing this by creating a buyer persona and using it as a guide. The buyer persona will be a reminder to the marketer that they are creating content for real human beings to engage with.

HOW TO CREATE A BUYER PERSONA

Creating a buyer persona involves a few steps and a social media marketing company will be careful to create a buyer persona that is accurate and takes into account data on existing customers and market research.
One of the first things to do when creating a buyer persona is to carry out a thorough audience research. This is vital as an inaccurate description of someone who represents the target audience will impact the effectiveness of the marketing strategies and campaign.
The audience research can look at personal demographics like age, gender, location, marital status, number of children, education, and income level as well as professional demographics like industry, company size, and job title.
The next step is to identify customer pain points, which are specific problems the customer may encounter at any point of the customer journey. Digital marketing services will look at product experience as well as customer experience and some of the most common customer pain point categories are financial, productivity, processes, and support.
A digital marketing agency can use AI tools to identify customer pain points when analyzing customer data and this is an important part of creating a buyer persona.
A marketer would then identify customer goals, which include both personal and career goals, as well as priorities.
After this data has been collected and analyzed, a SEO marketing company will look at ways in which the product or service can help the target audience taking into consideration their goals and problems.
A marketer will now have in their possession all necessary information to create a buyer persona. A buyer persona should be realistic and human, acting as a guide when creating content for digital marketing services or interacting with customers and potential customers.

WHAT DOES A BUYER PERSONA LOOK LIKE?

A marketer who has to create content targeting a 25-year-old male who owns a motorcycle will find it challenging to relate to the target audience and may end up with content that is bland and lifeless.
Replace this faceless and nameless person with Ashwin, a 25-year-old man living with his parents in Colombo. Ashwin works for a tech company and owns a motorcycle. Even though he has limited vacation time due to his job, Ashwin likes to camp in Ella when he can get away from Colombo.
A marketer would find it easier to create content that targets Ashwin and this is why a buyer persona is essential to creating effective content.