The Importance of Researching Your Buyer Persona

Would you get in your car and begin driving without knowing where you are going? Probably not, right? When you get in your car, you have already determined exactly where you are going and why you are going there.

Now, extend this analogy to the world of sales and marketing. Why run a marketing campaign without establishing a target audience? What if your target audience never sees it? That is where buyer personas come in.

What Is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is an ideal customer: someone you believe is likely to want and use your product or service. A well-thought-out buyer persona can help you and your business not only attract the right customers but better engage with them and meet or exceed all of their expectations.

So, why should you take the time to research your buyer personas? Below, we’ve discussed the three most important reasons why you should research your business’ buyer persona.

Reasons to Research Your Buyer Persona

1. Save Time

First and foremost, buyer personas save you and your business time. Instead of expanding your efforts on trying to make everyone your customer, focus on the qualified leads by surprising them, delighting them, and providing them with valuable information. This makes the potential customer happy and lays the foundation for a great business-customer relationship. By properly researching and establishing your buyer personas, you can capitalize on the personalized approach to those who are interested in what you have to offer.

2. Increase Engagement

The reason we create buyer personas is to make sure the right people are seeing the right information at the right times. In order to do this, it is important to create a buyer persona for each segment of your customer base.

For example, a college student likely has different reasons to research and purchase a product than a 40-year-old couple. Additionally, they will respond better to different types of marketing tactics. A college student might appreciate a Facebook post comparing a product to the hit show Stranger Things, whereas an older adult may have never even heard of this show. A buyer persona for each of these groups allows a company to get business from both groups by appealing to their specific interests and needs.

Segmentation goes hand-in-hand with engagement. It allows marketers to supply possible customers with the content that they are seeking and will respond to (bonus points if it is informative and fun!). As in the example above, popular trends, like the mannequin challenge, generate engagement amongst the younger generations.

Engaging each segment of your client base by using strategic content will help ensure you are exceeding their expectations.

3. Meet Your Goals

When creating your buyer personas, make sure to include the buyer’s goals, or what the customer hopes to accomplish. A customer who is considering your product or service wants to know exactly how your product or service will benefit them and make their life easier. Creating a clear list of goals and benefits for each buyer persona will allow you to present this information to your potential customers at the right time in the buyer journey. Which brings me to my next point…

What’s the Buyer’s Journey?

The buyer journey consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. In each of these stages, respectively, the customer determines if a goal is a priority, evaluates solutions and methods so that they can achieve this goal, and then decides what is the best option. As you can see, the concept of a goal with a solution and reward is the main idea behind the buyer journey. Most people will come to you in the awareness or consideration stage of this process. Identifying the exact stage each customer is in will help you further target your marketing efforts to adopt the perfect buyer persona.

Creating Your Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is crucial to fully understanding your target customer. So, how do you create one?

HubSpot has created a great, free guide to assist with developing detailed buyer personas. We recommend using this guide to help you find your own buyer persona to help you better your marketing efforts. And if you are in need of an expert’s opinion, the PHOS team is here to help!