It is important to get to know your customers. What does their daily life look like? What problems can your product or service help them solve? Why did they choose to use your product or service over a competitor

This is especially true in times of uncertainty and rapid change in the market. You may see your customers differently than you did a few months back. This information will help your store adapt to changing needs and ensure your continued success.

What is a buyer persona and why are they important?

A buyer persona represents a fictional segment of your target audience. It includes information about who they are, their values, and their concerns. This usually includes information such as demographics, behaviors, interests, and attitudes.

Your should reflect the industry niche they serve and be specific. A persona is not necessary if you are a coffee roaster. You can use a persona instead to portray the generic “coffee drinkers” category.

By giving you real people to relate to, buyer personas can help you increase your marketing, sales and branding efforts. They can help you create blog posts that answer the right question, craft advertising messages using the same vocabulary and language as your customers, adapt your offerings to better suit their needs, and train your sales staff more effectively.

48% more likely buyers will consider solutions from companies that tailor their marketing efforts to address their particular issues.

How to build buyer personas

It doesn’t need to be complicated or time-consuming to create buyer personas. These four steps will help you create a tool that will enhance your branding, marketing, and sales.

1. Collect information

Buyer personas that are effective are built on research and real information, not assumptions. Your products and business goals will determine their exact characteristics. Here are some categories to help you get started.

• Demographics: Age, gender, income and location. Education level, career options, and family size.
• Attitudes, interests, and goals: Hobbies, goals, challenges. Problems. Values.
• Behaviors: Purchase history, how they use products, what they read, and what they watch

Understanding your customers’ motivations, behaviors, and how they behave is your goal. This will allow you to better target your products and brand.

What is the best way to collect this information?

Get to know your customers, especially loyal ones. 

You can use analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Jetpack Website Stats to see which languages they speak, what browsers they use and how they found you. You can also see their interests and ages, whether they are returning or first-time visitors. What devices they use and how often they visit your website.

Add additional fields to your contact forms and checkout pages. Consider adding a question during checkout to collect more information. Do not add too many details. Stick to questions that are relevant to the purchase. For example, whether they are purchasing for someone else or themselves, if they have pets (cats or dogs), or what their age is.

Send a survey to your customers . Surveys can be used to get more information and insight into the minds of shoppers. To send surveys to customers or email subscribers, use Crowdsignal. Open-ended questions with text boxes let people provide information that isn’t available in multiple choice questions. Encouragement: Offer discounts or free shipping to everyone who completes the survey.

Ask questions via social media. This is a great way to get information from customers and followers. Ask questions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in the traditional posts or in polls in social media stories. Ask questions that you find useful and fun to answer.

Talk to customers. Talk to customers over the phone or face-to-face if you are able. This is particularly important for service-based businesses that have closer relationships with their clients. You can ask questions in this format to gain more insight into customer motivations.

2. Pinpoint common characteristics

What do you do now that you have all of this information? Look for trends. You can start with simple traits and demographics that are easy to categorize. Which age group does the majority of your customers belong to? Are they more likely to buy multiple products than one? Are your most loyal customers more likely to spend time on Facebook and Instagram?

To make it easier to understand the information at a glance, you might want to create a chart or spreadsheet.

3. Identify the customer’s pain points and goals

The abstract answers are the responses to open-ended questions posed in surveys and interviews. What are your customers’ typical uses of your products? What problems can your products solve for them? What are their daily challenges? What are their short-term and long-term goals?

You should also look out for repeated phrases or common language. These are very useful when writing marketing messages or blog posts. Keep track of responses you keep seeing in your spreadsheet.

4. Separate personas by separating characteristics, goals, pain points.

Now, it’s time for you to start building your buyer personas. You want to feel like you can relate to each person as an individual, so give them names and faces. You can use real photos of customers, which is great. However, stock photos are also useful to help you see their personalities.

How many are you going to need? This will vary depending on your business and products. However, a minimum of three to four is a good starting point. You can create more personas as you learn.

Take a look at your spreadsheet and identify common goals and challenges. Then, group them into separate personas. One person might be interested in healthy meals subscriptions. Another may have a goal to lose weight and another who has a food allergy but wants to eat less gluten. Three different people might be interested in toys: Parents who encourage imagination, families looking for the perfect gift for their child’s birthday, and educators who are interested in incorporating STEM toys into their education curriculum.

Next, complete the remaining information about each persona. The details you provide will vary depending on the products and business.

Examples of buyer personas

Here’s an example of a persona for a flower delivery business: 

Name Sarah

Demographics A bride in her late teens to early twenties who lives in the Southern United States. The bride is having a winter wedding with five groomsmen and bridesmaids.

Goals : To locate bouquets, arrangements of decorative flowers, and boutonnieres to her wedding.

Challenges – She isn’t sure where to begin when it comes to finding winter flowers that match her color scheme and her budget. She also doesn’t have much time for flower selection.

Purchase behavior: She’s bought a Mother’s Day arrangement in the past few years and has signed up for my email newsletter.

Hobbies and interests: Hiking, skiing, and other outdoor sports. She spends most of her time online, reading news articles and posting photos to Instagram.

The benefits of my product are that we take Sarah’s pressure off and make it easy to arrange. We offer packages that can be tailored to suit a variety of budgets.

This might be a buyer persona for a handmade toy company:

Name – David

Demographics : A married, stay-at home dad with children between the ages 3 and 8. Middle-class homeowner, located in the Pacific Northwest.

Goals : To find educational toys that are both entertaining and educational.

Challenges – He keeps his children away from video games and television, and uses their time to complete other chores around the house.

Purchase Behavior: This is a new customer who has never purchased from us before.

Hobbies and interests: Watching movies and reading. He spends a lot of time on Twitter, and engages with others on forums.

The benefits of my product All toys are intended to encourage STEM learning. They are classified based on the level of parental involvement and age.

ObjectionsHe doesn’t want to just buy another toy his children will tire of, and he doesn’t want to spend a lot.

These personas are specific, based on the information and common answers from earlier steps. After you have created your personas, make sure to save them somewhere everyone can see: salespeople, marketing gurus and leadership.

How to use buyer personas

We’ve already discussed the importance of buyer personas and how they can help you grow your business. Let’s now look at some specific ways you can use them to improve sales and your store.

You might consider asking Sarah questions about winter arrangements if you are the same flower shop that we mentioned. A gallery of arrangements for different seasons could be featured on your FAQ page so that she can see examples and ideas for winter bouquets. You could email her to let her know that she is an email subscriber and offer a complimentary consultation. You might also share testimonials from active women in her age bracket on Instagram to make it feel like you are speaking directly with her.

You might blog about David’s concerns regarding educational toys if you are the toy shop talking to him.

• Engaging crafts and activities that will get your children to turn off their TVs
• How toys can help brain development
• Toys and board games that children can play by themselves
• Toys that encourage children to fall in love learning

You might consider including testimonials from parents who have had wonderful experiences on your website because you know he is concerned about his children getting bored of their toys. You might choose to focus your attention on Twitter since you know that he spends a lot of time there.

Think about Sarah and David when you are creating an advertising campaign or adding pages to your website. Think of them as your direct contact.

Your online store’s foundation

Your buyer personas will be the foundation of your company. You’ll build your marketing, products, and branding around them. Each one should be carefully crafted.