Amy is 35 years of age. Amy was promoted to Marketing Manager at her SaaS company. As a marketing assistant, she learned a lot over the years. However, the owners of the company expect her to do a lot in her new role. The first order of business was to improve the company’s marketing effectiveness.

Amy is not a real person.

She is a persona, a representation of an ideal buyer.

Why is Amy in my mind (and on this page above)?

Because without her, I wouldn’t be able to write.

Copywriting and content creation are two things that can be said with certainty: Writing for a group of people is a recipe for failure.

Writing for large groups of people can lead to a message that is too broad. It may be unfocused and misses the mark entirely. This is the equivalent of trying to hit 10 dartboards using one dart. You’ll hear it from any great conversion copywriter:

It’s easier to create relevant content – and reach your real audience with that content – when you write it for one human being

In today’s content-fatigued, craving-a-personal-touch marketplace, a buyer persona works so much better than simply segmenting your audience by demographic attributes.

A detailed buyer persona is a way to show the buyer as an individual, rather than grouping them into categories. A person who might exist in real life.

You can see that a buyer persona helps you to understand your customers. This helps you understand your customer’s problems, their values, and the obstacles they face. It also allows you to determine what success looks like for them. These things can be addressed intelligently and directly when you write your content.

When creating your marketing content, a buyer persona will be the person you write to. Your content will be easier to create if you capture the attention of this imaginary person.

Here are the steps.

How you can create a buyer (or reader) persona 

You must first gather information.

Which are your most profitable customers? Who are your best customers?

Find common traits and write them down.

These are five places where you can find information to help your buyer persona.

1. Customer Data

Take a look at actual data from customers or interview customers.

Sales and customer service teams often have a lot of buyer data that you can search for.

You can create insightful audience reports if you have Google Analytics enabled for demographics and interest reports.

To get to know your target customers, you might consider conducting surveys or adding a popup survey to your website.

2. Competitor data

Look at your competitors’ customers if you don’t have any customers.

This HTML metrics post contains 25 online tools and gadgets that will help you spy on your competition.

You can also look at the social media profiles of your competitors to get a better idea of their trends. To get an overview of your competitors’ audience, use a tool such as Followerwonk or Socialbakers Ana.

Your goal is to reach the same people as your competitors. Find out who’s already engaging with them. This information can be used to create your buyer persona.

3. Market Research

Market research is a great way for you to learn more about your target customers if you have the funds.

Market research firms can help you organize focus groups and send questionnaires out to your target audience.

Today, many companies offer market research services that are specifically designed to create buyer personas. One example is the Buyer Persona Institute.

Companies that specialize in market research are available for certain verticals. Spiceworks is a company that conducts market research in the IT industry.

Analyzing market research data is a great way to quickly identify commonalities among your target buyer audience. A buyer persona is more than generalities. Make sure to examine the market research data that you receive from market research firms. These surveys will reveal the words that your target buyers use. These responses will help you to flesh out your buyer persona.

4. Social Media

To get a better look at who you’re trying to reach with products and services, use social media

You can check your analytics with the built-in reporting tools of your primary social media platform.

You can also open Socialbakers and look at your followers to get a deeper understanding of who you are. Each tool comes with a free trial. However, you will get the most out of your paid account.

Follower wonk’s analysis tool provides valuable insight into who is following you on Twitter.

This tells me that my Twitter followers care a lot about social media marketing companies in Phoenix.

You’re not just looking for gender, age, and location. Take into account the times your followers post, their interests, and who they are following.

You can also read the posts of your most active followers. This will give you a lot of insight into the lives, work, and personalities of your target customers.

5. Find out where your customers are hanging out

Try to imagine yourself as your customers. Consider where your customers hang out online and offline. This includes forums, events, organizations, and even videos that they comment on YouTube. Spend some time listening.

Let’s take a look at Amy to see how insightful this exercise can be. Amy is the persona that you saw at the beginning of this post.

Based on the relationships I have had over the years with marketers, my social media interactions with them, and the conversations I had at events with them, I created her. However, I also spent time listening online and at in-person events. This revealed more about Amy than even direct conversations.

Amy is a great example of a marketer. I discovered that they have their vocabulary. Sometimes they have difficulty keeping up with the latest trends, tactics, and technology. A simple how-to post can help these smart people. They are very focused on their marketing, and their online presence (social media platforms, website, etc.) is a testament to that. It is often a well-curated brand. I need to get to know them better.

To find conversations about your industry, product, or niche you can use an advanced search on Twitter.

Another way to spy on your customers is to look at their comments on blogs.

Some organizations publish bios about their attendees and members when they host in-person events. These can be useful resources for learning more about people you are interested in engaging with.

Are you unsure where your customers are online? Ask your customers! Ask them! Send out surveys or personal emails to your top customers. Soon, I will go into more detail about how to leverage your buyer persona for more marketing traction.

Use these insights to create your buyer persona

Your buyer persona can be created in Word, PowerPoint slides decks, or Excel. I’ll provide a template. Just keep reading!) You can open your tool, get creative, and answer these questions as detailed as possible.

Personal Information / Who is he or she?

• Is the person male or female
• What is his/her age?
• Where is he/she living?
• Are they married? Divorced? Widowed? Single?
• Are there any children? If yes, how many?
• What kind of education has this person received?
• What is the household income of this person?
• What is the best way for this person to spend their day?
• What is he/she interested in doing for fun?
• What are your biggest fears?

Your details will allow you to get into the mind of your target buyer. 

Direct sales to consumers (B2C) allow you to understand their values, wants, and needs. This will help you position your product as the best solution.

Details about Work / What Motivates Him or Her?

• Where is this person working?
• What is his/her job in the company?
• What are the current challenges he/she is facing at work?
• What do they want from their career?
• What is success at work for him/her?

Work details are like personal details. They help you to understand your buyer. 

If you sell to other businesses (B2B), this information is even more important. This information will allow you to understand the business problems that they are trying to solve. You can also get a better understanding of who you should reach at the company since B2B purchasing decisions are often made in committees.

Communication preferences / How can you connect with him or her?

• Which social media platforms does he/she use

• What would your immediate objections be if you offered your product/service to that person?

• What is the preferred way this person consumes information? Are they a watcher, readers, or listeners?

• What is his/her preferred method of communicating? Phone? Email? Text message?

Knowing your target buyer’s communication preferences will help you reach them more effectively. You won’t get far if you send emails to people who prefer to talk by phone. You may also lose their attention if they don’t want to hear your objections.

It doesn’t take much to create your buyer persona.

Two companies that are taking it out of the park

These 2 companies produce marketing content that is more aligned with their target buyers than others.

It is easy to see the buyer persona behind these powerful marketing campaigns. Have a look!

Apple Markets to A Lifestyle

Look closely at the positioning of the Apple Watch. Each piece of copy on this page is directed at one persona: the Go-getter. 

They manage their time. They exercise religiously. They are avid users of voicemail and email. They are leaders who focus their cognitive energy on making bigger decisions. They wear the same clothes every day, eat at the same restaurants and use digital wallets to pay their bills instead of a messy billfold.

Apple created this long webpage to introduce Type-A personalities to the next productivity tool they can’t live without.

These high achievers can also be reached through guided tours.

Olay Markets to a Lifetime of Experience

Olay is for women over 35 who want a proven way to age gracefully. These ladies won’t be influenced by the latest trends and can enjoy your goji-berry juice. They are looking for skin products that have scientific backing.

These buyers aren’t penny-pinchers but they’re also not wasteful. These buyers want to have a customized skin-care routine, but Barney’s makeup counter is not always available. Olay created an online tool to provide a customized skin-care routine and recommend products for this audience.

Olay markets to women who have spent a lot of money and time on products that didn’t work. These women are looking for quick results or they will move on to the next product. This infographic by Olay is fun to view and explains the science behind the products as well as how fast buyers can expect them to work.

How To Use Buyer Personas To Improve Your Content Conversion Rates 

Here are three ways you can use your buyer persona now that you have created it.

1. Use the language of your persona

Use the language that your target audience uses to ensure your content resonates with them.

Your persona is the single-person representation of your target audience. It speaks in a specific way about their problems and their objections and offers your solution. Create an immediate connection between your content and your target audience using their language.

The content will be more meaningful to the reader if they can see themselves in it. They’ll also pay more attention. This connection will keep your audience reading and make your content more persuasive. It will help you move the reader toward conversion.

You’re in luck if the research you did to build your buyer persona revealed actual communications from real customers. These soundbites can be used to create content that resonates with your target audience.

Don’t worry if your buyer persona is purely based on your imagination. For your persona-specific language, you can use conversations with real people you have had in real life. Imagine how your persona would speak to you and then use that language in the content. Better yet, you can read the reviews of books that your persona would recommend. Amazon reviews can be a treasure trove of buyer language.

Pro tip: Use the online phrase-frequency calculator to analyze Amazon book reviews and identify common phrases that your customers are using.

2. Segment Your Content By Persona

You likely already have a lot of marketing content in your arsenal. Some of this content will resonate with your buyer persona. Some of it will not.

Take a look through your content and see it through the eyes of your buyer persona. Anything that isn’t appealing to them, you can either remove or rewrite it. Ineffective content can confuse your customers and will slow down your content strategy.

Take the content that you have kept and align them to the steps of the buyer’s journey.

1. Awareness stage: What content could help the persona as they begin to realize that they have a problem? At this stage, what would entertain and most engage them?
2. Stage of interest: How can you keep the person’s attention, educate them, and build a relationship once they get to know you?
3. Stage Evaluation: What content will persuade the persona that they should buy from you?
4. Post-purchase: What do you need to make sure that the person feels good about making a purchase and can use the product?
5. Customer loyalty stage: What content could help your persona once they have become satisfied customers and encourage them to recommend your products/services to friends? What content could facilitate a dialogue between you both?

Do you see any gaps? Is there any stage that doesn’t have content? Create content for them. This article has some great ideas for you if you are unsure what content to create for each stage.

This exercise can be used for multiple buyer personas. You must ensure they have the right content to engage, educate, and support them throughout the buying process.

3. You can get the inside scoop and share your content by hanging out where your persona is

To find out where your buyers are, use your buyer persona. Are they on Facebook or LinkedIn? Are they involved in industry forums? Which organizations are they part of?

Go wherever your persona would like to hang out. Do not just “stalk” – even though some online research can be helpful, it won’t help you to engage your target customers. Engage in real conversations, and take part in conversations already taking place.

Notice that I didn’t say “hawk your products.” I said, “have a conversation.” This will position you as an expert and help you gain trust.

These conversations will reveal problems and answers that you need to solve. This will allow you to discover what motivates your buyers and what makes them smile. This information will help you create content that meets their needs.

These problems can be solved, questions answered, and buyers challenged. You can also entertain them by creating content specifically for this purpose.

Your content can be distributed in the same places as your buyers. However, it is a good idea to build trust before you do this. Even if you don’t make your content too salesy (like a whitepaper or an e-book), it might not work well if you try to throw it at people who don’t know you, on their turf.

If it makes sense and the context is right, you can share your content with these people.

If someone asks how to speed up Wi-Fi and you have a great blog post about it, please share the link along with an introduction about how this blog will help them. You’re now a hero, not a salesman. This content will be a lot more persuasive to convince the person to sign up for your mailing lists or take the next step towards becoming your customer.

Buyer Persona does all the heavy lifting

Amy used this information to increase her marketing ROI by 10% within her first three months of employment. Her request to hire two marketing assistants was approved by the CEO. She now needs training material to get her new employees up to speed.

Knowing who you are writing to will help make your content more appealing and get it into the hands of the right people at the right time.

Content should serve two purposes. It should first be of direct benefit to the buyer. It should also make the case of why you are the best person/company to do business with. It is much easier to write to one person.