Make your marketing more efficient with Buyer Personas

Sure, anyone can buy your product or service, but who actually will? Can you lump your customers into broad categories? If you can, you could save a lot of time and money by focussing your marketing efforts on just these people, rather than trying to reach everyone. Spending a few minutes to develop “Buyer Personas” can help you understand your customers’ needs and behaviours so your messaging can be more targeted. Download my free worksheet to get started.

Your buyer personas will be fictional—but true—representations of your customers. Make up a few sample customers that would represent most of your market from just your own observations, and some customer data if you have it. You don’t have to capture all of your market, just most of it. See if you can make 3 personas that make up 80% or more of your business. If you can round out their characteristics and make them more like real people, it will be easier to keep them in mind when you are making business decisions.

There are some basics that most personas will include like gender, age, education, income, and interests. My worksheet includes these and a few more:

• Gender

• Age

• Relationship status

• Family

• Job

• Income

• Education

• Interests

• Goals

• Pain points

• How do we solve?

• A quote

• Media channels

Make three or four different personas at most. It is not better to have more. You are trying to distill your customers into focussed categories. If you have some customer data to reference, you may be able to specify some other shared characteristics for your categories. Definitely use some criteria specific to your industry. 

It is very helpful to use a quote for each persona…something that group would typically say. This really helps to give your persona a personality. If you are a wedding planner, you might find this easy. One persona, Eva, might say “I don’t mind stretching the budget, this is my special day and it will be exactly the way I want!”, and another persona, Claire, says “I know we can make it special by being creative rather than spending a lot of money”. These two personas will have other characteristics to differentiate them. It will be easier to target your marketing decisions to either Eva or Claire, when you have a good idea of what their other behaviours and characteristics are.

For our wedding planner, these two personas alone may not make up 80% of their business. But if we add another one, we might get there. Let’s add Saundra, a 45-year-old, planning a second wedding who says, “I’ve got some money to spend, but I don’t want anything fancy. Simple and tasteful will do”. 

Eva - represents 25% of clients

Claire - represents 40% of clients

Saundra - represents 20% of clients

Perfect; these three personas will make up 85% of our wedding planner’s business. Once you have sketched out your customer personas, you may be able to make them more accurate by gathering data from other sources. If you can validate your personas with sales data, customer interviews, and/or research, their accuracy will improve their value. When fully developed, they will be indispensable when it is time to make business decisions. 

Buyer personas will help you focus on your customers’ goals and understand what motivates their behaviour. Eliminate projects and marketing that do not motivate them. Zero in on the people who most need your product or service and speak directly to Eva, Claire, and Saundra.