How to Create Buyer Personas: The Complete Guide [+Examples] (2023)

The reason why some brands are more successful than others isBuyer personalities🇧🇷 While often overlooked by some businesses, buyer personas can be an invaluable tool for reaching your customers more effectively.

A deep understanding of your buyer personas allows your business (from marketing to sales and support) to align and attract high-quality leads and customers that are easier to retain over time.

Check out this blog post for a complete guide on:

• what are buyer personas
• why are they so important to a company and
• How to create one in 4 easy steps

So, without further ado, let's get down to business!

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, gleaned from extensive audience research and customer data. This persona is semi-fictional as it is not a real person but is based on real insights drawn from your real customers.

These personas will help you guide your product development to better meet the needs of your target audience, align work across your internal departments, and most importantly, focus on potential customers that really matter.

The characteristics of your personas come from customer surveys, market research, interviews, focus groups, customer service, demographics, psychographics, etc. And since there are different types of customers who buy your products, you may need to create more than one persona.

Below is a visual of the different types of details your personas should include.

Now let's see why creating personas is an important part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Why are buyer personas essential for your business?

Buyer personas are very important for every business because they help you understand your customers better. When you discover your existing customers as well as your potential customers, you can customize yourContent Marketing Strategyand create personalized content.

Plus, you can make informed decisions about your product development and marketing messages. At the same time, buyer personas can help you address your customers' pain points and potential roadblocks.

In the email marketing that offersthe biggest returnAmong digital marketing channels, building buyer personas helps in properly targeting customers and creating high-converting marketing campaigns.

Buyer personas are also helpful when making decisions about you.social media strategy🇧🇷 Creating organic posts that “engage” your audience will help you build trust and form a strong bond with your customer base.

In addition, you will see benefits in your social advertising. There are many granular targeting options to help get your ad in front of the right people. Therefore, knowing who the ideal people are for you is crucial.

Overall, buyer personas are absolutely essential if your brand is to be engaging.Marketing omnicanalbecause they basically streamline your sales process.

However, there is no "fixed" number of marketing personas you need to create. You can have one or two if you're just starting out, or up to 10 if you want detailed buyer personas.

And now it's time to see how you can create your own buyer personas for your business!

How to Create Buyer Personas [Step by Step]

The process of creating one or more different personas involves 4 steps. To successfully create useful buyer personas, you must leverage data and information gathered from your audience and your internal teams (eg sales team, marketing team, etc.).

1. Conduct thorough audience research

The first step in this process is to delve deeper into your existing customers. To gather useful data about what kind of people your customers are, you can use two strategies. First, real conversations with your customers are a good place to start. After that, you can look internally and conduct interviews with your internal team members.

This provides a comprehensive understanding of your customers' behavior as well as their goals and potential challenges.

Customer surveys and interviews

Surveying your current and potential customers is an ideal way to find out what they like about your product/service.

First, you need to build trust with your conversation partners, make it clear that this is not a sales pitch.to make them feel comfortableto share these insights with you.

Your main goal is to understand customer behavior, so you can even ask questions that inform you about how they find and consume your content.

The top questions to ask your customers are further down in this blog post.

It's a good ideacount dissatisfied customerswith your product. That way, you can find patterns that will help you build stronger buyer personas. For example, your unhappy customers might find your product too technical or difficult to use. This illustrates one of the challenges your customers face that can influence your product development.

The benefit of surveying your existing customers is that you may not need to provide an incentive (for example, a discount coupon). Most customers like to be heard and are eager to provide their feedback and potentially influence the products/services they use. So it's important to emphasize to them that you value their feedback. At the same time, this process increases brand loyalty.

At this point, you might be wondering how you decide how many people to interview. While there is no definitive answer, you shouldThe goal is to interview at least 3 to 5 peoplefor every person you create.

You'll know it's time to stop at the point where you can "predict" what your conversation partner is likely to say. It also depends on how much data you already have when communicating with your internal teams (e.g. your sales team).

Interviews with your internal teams

Conducting interviews with your internal teams can help gain insight into your customers' pain points, goals, and common behaviors before creating your final personas. Also, the overall goal is to find out what types of customers are buying your product.

Starting with your sales team, youinteract with your customers every day🇧🇷 As a result, they can provide the best insights into the factors that influence a potential customer's decision to make or not make a purchase. In addition, they are the ones who constantly receive questions from their target audience to find out whatUnique Selling Propositions (USPs)that make the most sense to your customers.

Moving on to your marketing team, they know your customers' behavior through indirect interactions. How are you found online? Which of your blog posts has the most appeal? Which marketing page on your website gets the most impressions?

All these questions will help you better understand who you need to reach and the best way to reach them.

2. Discover customer goals and pain points

When you discover your customers' goals and identify their pain points, you canImproving the buyer's journeyand provide a better user experience.

Your sales and customer support team will certainly help you find answers to these questions, but it's also job-critical.social listeningand sentiment analysis in social media.

Through social listening tools, you can monitorYour brand mentions, products and competitors. Essentially, you get aSee what people are saying about you online in real time🇧🇷 You can learn why people love your products and what parts of the customer experience are failing, then incorporate those insights into your buyer personas.

You can take it a step further and ask your customer service to get quotes from real customers. This will add more detail to your personas.

3. Understand how to benefit users

Once you have a good understanding of your customers' goals and pain points, it's time to determine how your product or service can help users. See how to proceed in this step.

Analyze the benefits of your product/service and how it makes life easier for your customers. Most marketers have the misconception that they should focus on features. But features describe the product from the brand's point of view, while benefits define the practical convenience the user will enjoy.

You must be wondering how you canHelp your audience overcome key buying barriers.

A good way to master this step is to conduct an online survey of your customers and loyal fans. They will be able to identify your product's immediate benefits, helping you consider how to transform your message and create compelling campaigns.

4. Gather data and create buyer personas

Now it's time to pull together the collected data and look for common characteristics. Once these traits are summarized, you have the foundation for your buyer personas.

For example, let's say you identify a core customer group of single women in their 50s who live in large cities and have above-average incomes. You must transform this abstract set of characteristics into a persona that you can interact with.

So give your buyer persona a name, job title, age, and other identifying characteristics to make it seem like a real person. You could call her "High Performance Sally".

Of course, this representation of traits doesn't apply to ALL the buyers in your audience, but it helps you think about your potential buyers in a "human" way rather than intangible data. Additionally, each persona represents a segment of your audience, allowing you to improve your marketing efforts.

Pro Tip:It is always very useful to use aBuyer Persona Templateas a basis for creating your personas. You can find interesting HubSpot B2C and B2B buyer persona templates by clicking onhere.

28 questions to ask in personal interviews

This list includes some of the key questions to ask when creating detailed customer personas. Most of them are universal. You can add or remove questions as you see fit for your target customers.

1. Questions about personal background (demographics)

• How old are they?
• What's your gender?
• What is your marital status?
• Do you have kids?
• What level of education do you have?
• What did you study?
• How did you end up where you are today?

2. Questions about the career profile

• What is your professional role and position?
• What skills are needed for your job?
• How long have you been in your current position?
• How is your work measured?
• What tools do you use in your work?
• Who are you reporting? Who is reporting to you?
• What sector does your company belong to?
• How big is your company?
• What is your company's revenue?
• What is a typical day like?
• What social networks do you use (eg Facebook, LinkedIn)?
• What blogs do you read?
• What are your spending habits?

3. Questions about Goals and Challenges

• What are your business goals?
• How is success defined in your role?
• What is your biggest challenge(s)?
• What is your biggest problem using our product?
• What's the worst customer service experience you've ever had?

4. Preference questions

• How do you prefer to interact with suppliers (email, phone, in person)?
• Are you researching suppliers/products on the Internet?
• How did you decide to purchase this product/service (last purchase)?

Conclusion

Buyer personas are a powerful tool for businesses large and small to maximize their marketing efforts and create effective customer journeys. They help you reach your target market more efficiently, improve conversions and increase customer loyalty.

While many brands still don't realize their importance, buyer personas can be among the key factors that will help you win over your competitors.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Here are the most frequently asked questions we collect about buyer personas.

1. Are B2B buyer personas different from B2C?

B2C and B2B buyer personas are not much different. B2C buyer personas portray the ideal customer's demographics, preferences, emotions, and goals. B2B personas, on the other hand, tend to focus more on the size of the company, the people making the buying decisions (decision makers), and the benefits sought.