Why you need to create a buyer persona for your business

Why you need to create a buyer persona for your business. The majority of startups and small businesses fail within five years. Although many things can cause that, poor planning is often the most common.

Plans are everything in business. They not only help you make well-informed decisions based on realities, but also design products that appeal to your target market.

A buyer persona is a detailed description of your most ideal customers – your target market.

When you have a deep understanding of who they are, then you can create plans which speak to them. You’ll be able to make calculated moves based on accurate customer insights.

This article will go over 5 reasons why you need a buyer persona for your business and some simple steps to take when creating one.

5 reasons why you need to create a buyer persona

1. You’ll get a better understanding of your target customers

A buyer persona will tell you all you need to know about your target customers.

You’ll get to understand their demographics, shopping habits, spending capabilities, and so much more.

Having such useful data when developing your business and marketing plans will help point you in the right direction.

You’ll no longer be making decisions solely based on assumptions.

2. You’ll know where to find your target customers

The majority of the world’s population has internet access.

There’s simply no better place to find business leads than online. But it’s not as easy as it may seem.

The internet is extremely vast, and without some form of direction, you can easily get lost in the abyss. It would be like sailing a ship without a compass.

A buyer persona in this case would be the compass that helps you navigate the internet. It would give your marketing campaigns a starting point by showing where your business leads are likely to be found.

For example, if your buyer persona consists of teenagers, then you’ll know not to waste your time on LinkedIn or even Facebook, and instead focus on Instagram and TikTok.

3. You’ll be able to create better-targeted marketing campaigns

A buyer persona will help you create personalized campaigns that resonate with your target consumers and speak in a language they understand.

You can alter your tone of voice to match theirs, and even use some of their industry jargon when communicating with them. That shows that you’re on the same page as them.

You’ll also be able to segment your marketing campaigns according to the different buyer personas you have.

Segmented campaigns often have a great ROI because they target smaller groups of people with characteristics that are most similar to your target customers, which brings us to the next point…

4. You’ll get better ROI from your marketing efforts

When you have a clear image of your buyer persona, you’ll be able to streamline all your marketing efforts and focus only on channels that give you the best return on investment.

Most digital advertising platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads give advertisers an array of tools and targeting options to help them reach people who are most likely to convert.

You can target users based on their age, gender, location, income class, interests, and even keywords they’re actively searching online.

A buyer persona will enable you to take full advantage of such advanced targeting options and create laser-focused campaigns that reach their intended audience.

5. You’ll get to know your negative personas

A negative persona is the opposite of a buyer persona, the people who you’re NOT targeting because they offer little value to your business.

For example, if you’re selling a guitar course for beginners, your negative persona can include students who are at intermediate or advanced levels.

While they may still be interested in learning the guitar, your course would not be a good fit for them.

When you know who your negative personas are, then you’ll not waste any time or resources chasing them down.

How to create a buyer persona

Step 1: Research your customers

Creating a buyer persona is quite an easy and straightforward process. The first step is to research and gather information based on real-life people. If your business is operational, take look at your current customer base and then group them by:

Age
Gender
Location
Industry
Interests
Income class

You can add any other factors which are relevant to your business. If you don’t have customers yet, there are numerous tools you can use to research your direct competitors and learn more about their customers, including SimilarWeb and Woorank.

The information you obtain so far will tell you who your potential customers are. The next step will be to find out what problems they’re facing.

Step 2: Find out their pain points

Identify all the challenges they’re facing with products that are currently available in the market.

You can easily do that by browsing through your competitors’ social media pages and reading their comments and reviews.

Any negative comment you come across from a dissatisfied customer is a pain point to note down.

Step 3: Find out their goals

What exactly are they trying to accomplish by using the product in question?

In many cases, goals are the opposite of pain points.

For example, if they’re having challenges using a printer because it keeps jamming, then what they want is a better printer that does the job without jamming every time.

Their goal is simply to print more effortlessly.

Step 4: Organize your data

The final step is to organize all the raw data you’ve collected into separate categories.

Find all the people who are facing similar challenges and have similar goals, and then group them into their own categories. Each category will represent a different persona.

You can create up to 20 personas representing different people who have an interest in your products.

Make sure to give them real human names to make them feel like actual people. They will be the foundation upon which you build your entire business.