A Complete Guide to Creating a Buyer Persona
Let's talk about gifts. If I asked you to get someone a gift, you would be at a loss for what you should get this someone.
Are they younger, older, male, female, anywhere in between?
Are they a corporate business professional or free-spirited freelancer?
Do they value time or quality more?
Since you don't want your gift to be thrown right into the trash, you might even ask the question, "Well, what do they need?"
One person might hate to receive a new skillet, but that could be a dream gift for the person who just ruined theirs cooking eggs.
Trying to create content in marketing without a buyer persona is like trying to buy a gift for a stranger. Chances are it will not go well.
You may have good intentions, but you may also be wasting time and money. You might create excellent SEO-optimized content, but how do you know it's going to the right people? How do you know where their attention is?
A buyer persona is also known as a customer persona and is a detailed outline of the ideal customer for a product or service. It is used to help marketers create stuff that connects with the people they are trying to sell that stuff to.
Perhaps your product or service is a great solution for someone, but if you present it in a way that doesn't connect with them, they won't show interest.
Here are the facts. Using a buyer persona in your marketing efforts can:
Lift sales by 124%.
Lead to a 97% increase in leads.
Increase organic traffic by 55%.
Increase North American site traffic by 210%.
A buyer persona reveals who you are making content for and how it should be presented.
There are two ways to make a buyer persona.
1. Make a buyer persona using existing data from your business.
This is great for people who have been in the game for a while and have some idea of who their customer is intuitively but have never spent time figuring out who they are exactly. These folks have reviews, website traffic, and experience interacting with clients and customers.
They have the stuff to work with.
2. Make a buyer persona without existing data.
Many people launch marketing campaigns before having a customer base or sales. You have to start somewhere. They may have an idea of their marketing persona, but there is not data they can look at to back it up. This is more tricky, but still possible.
How to Find Customer Information With Google Analytics
If you are an established business, you can get most of this demographic information from Google Analytics, in the Audience section:
In the demographics tab, you can find their average age and gender.
In the interests tab, you can find out their general interests and their professional line of work.
In the geo tab, you can even find out their geographical information. Where are they located in the world?
You can also use Analytics to see which social networks your customers are coming from and the current conversion rates of your marketing campaigns.
If you haven't set up Google Analytics yet, it needs to be a priority. No digital marketing team is complete without knowing that their efforts are working.
Creating a buyer persona will open your eyes to the customer experience, but having web data will be the true indicator that you have nailed your buyer persona — or not.
How to Find Customer Information From Your Sales Team
Google Analytics can give you good quantitative metrics, but it can’t tell you enough about who your customers really are.
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, organizations whose sales and marketing teams work together closely achieve 20% annual revenue and growth.
For this, we actually need to talk to human beings. How do we do this?
Talk to your sales team and your customer support staff. These are the people who follow up with leads every day.
Sure, having formal market research and demographic data is great, but these people are talking to customers every day, and their experiences are super valuable.
The main questions you are trying to learn here are, "What was going on in your life the day you decided to buy from us?” or, "What events in your life led up to you choosing us as a solution?"
Why ask current customers? You want to find more people like them because they actually bought from you. Even if you can't talk to customers directly, at least talk to your sales team who does. These folks are a gold mine for customer information.
Make your sales team your best friend.
How to Find Customer Information From Surveys Without Being Boring
No one wants to do a pointless survey, so you need to spice it up.
Incentivize it with something related to your product or service. Give a discount for the first 30 people who fill it out.
Do a social media survey. This is less formal and will probably include people who have not yet bought from you, but they are at least following you.
They are connected to you enough to look at your posts.
Ask questions that will give you insight into their context and pain points.
What do you do when you come across X?
What is your biggest struggle with X?
Can anyone else relate to X?
How to Find Customer Information From Emails and Reviews
Check out your Google and Yelp reviews. If you don't have any then this is a good time to start incentivizing some.
Give a discount on the bill if they screenshot their Google review and show it to you.
If you are hesitant to know what people will actually say about your product or service then there is a good chance that this is exactly what you need in your marketing efforts. Maybe you suspect you will encounter some gripes. Sure. But knowing is better than not knowing.
You can't fix something if you don't know what the problem is.
Help desk tickets and emails are often a great resource for finding information.
What If I Don't Have Any of This Stuff?
If you don't have Google Analytics set up on your website, it's time to start. I have a whole post on how to get that going in under 20 minutes.
If you don't have reviews, it's time to hustle and get these first. A good rule of thumb is to have about 30 reviews for your product or service.
If you have no customer data, this has just become your primary mission.
Get personal.
Send a personal email asking a few questions. Check out this awesome email from Rand Fishkin of SparkToro for ideas.
The 3 Big Questions for Every Buyer Persona Template
What is the context of your target customer? What is their current situation?
This is the setting of a movie.
Are they busy professionals scarfing down breakfast burritos on their morning walk to work?
Are they stay-at-home parents who feel bored and not mentally stimulated by their day-to-day child-rearing?
Context can fall into a few different categories:
Professional context: Where are they in their career? Are they executives or entry-level? Who are the types of influencers they follow? What is their job title?
Experience level: Where are they in your knowledge base related to your product or service? Do they even know your industry exists, or are they seasoned pros who have seen it all?
Demographics: This is where we determine their age, marital status, and gender. Even though many stereotypical views about these statistics are biased and socially constructed, we cannot discount them as the lens through which people view the world.
For example, Tristan Walker created a straight razor specifically designed to help people of color who have curly hair not get razor bumps when they shave. Understanding who his product was for was important in the messaging he used and how he used it.
Why Is the Context of the Buyer's Situation Important?
In addition to determining how we will speak to a customer, this also helps us get some idea of where they are at.
Different types of folks frequent LinkedIn over Instagram.
People go to YouTube for one thing and Pinterest for something else.
If your ideal customer is a busy executive, don't expect them to read your five-thousand-word blog post — you better have some condensed video content, too.
When you understand your buyer's context, you have a starting place for interacting with them and initiating a relationship.
Where can I get context and situation information from?
Understanding Your Customer's Problems and Pain Points
Now that you have some idea where your customers are at in their life, we need to dig into the problems they are going through.
Every customer has 3 main types of pain points:
Physical pain: My website doesn't get enough traffic. My feet hurt. I can't figure out how to optimize my blog content.
This is the basic problem in the physical world.
Emotional pain: This is how they feel about physical pain. I feel frustrated that more people are not viewing my content. I'm anxious that I am not getting enough movement in my life because walking hurts.
I feel unsure that my content efforts are working.
Philosophical pain: This is what your customer believes should or should not be true. I believe that having people find my content shouldn't be a mystery. I believe that staying active with healthy feet is essential to feeling happy.
I believe that there should be a clear way to know if my content is optimized.
When you understand these pain points then you can create content that lets them know you truly understand where they are coming from.
Being misunderstood sucks. If you don't know your customers’ pain points then they feel misunderstood.
Other Types of Customer Problems
You can go even deeper into these problems to figure out the type of problem that you need to solve. This will be helpful. Here are few different types of pain points that your product or service may be trying to solve. source
Positioning: An individual or company's position compared to others.
You or your company are not where they want to be in life.
You are behind your competitors.
The market has changed and is leaving you behind.
People still don't know you exist.
Productivity: An individual or company can't get enough done.
You are constantly trying to catch up.
You are missing deadlines and falling behind.
You are not getting the important stuff done.
Financial: An individual or company isn't making enough money.
You're not getting new customers.
Your skillset isn't enough to pay off your student loans.
You don't have the money for a fancy or easy solution.
People: An individual or company has people problems.
You can't find the right talent.
Your employees aren't excited to come to work.
Your team doesn't have the skills to take your business to the next level.
Process: An individual or company has a broken system or sequence to get stuff done.
Your hiring process takes too long and the candidates still aren't great.
You don't have a clear way to communicate changes.
You are not sure how to track where or why customers are leaving.
Creating Your Solution to a Customer’s Problem
Now that you know where your customer is coming from and what their problem is, you can actually help them with your solution.
You may be thinking, "But, I only have one solution, my product. How could this be different for different problems?"
Let's say you’re a boutique gym with fitness classes. In general, folks come to your gym to get in better shape.
This is your top-level solution. There are tons of places that people can go to get this service.
How are you different?
How do your differences solve your buyer persona's problems?
If your buyer persona's issue is being busy and not having enough time...
You will state that they can work out just 3 days a week and see great results. Also, your customer won't have to think about what they are going to do for the day, they just show up. Last, you have a ton of class time options to fit even the most dynamic of schedules.
If your buyer persona's problem is that they are intimidated to work out and are afraid they might do something wrong...
You will tell them about the certification and expertise of the coaches. You'll inform them that these coaches work with folks of all experience levels and that it will be hard, but they will have fun, too.
If your buyer persona's problem is that they aren't motivated...
Explain how doing things in a group environment is always better than trying to work out by yourself. We do our best work in community and that's also where the most significant change is possible. Working out alongside like-minded people will inspire them on days that they are on the struggle bus.
Same gym, same top-level solutions, different buyer persona solutions.
How to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Using a Buyer Persona
Most people will not buy your product or service right out. They are going to need some warming up. You will need to initiate a relationship with them. You'll need to give them some free value before they are willing to trust you with their marketing.
In order to build trust, you need to create content that both helps them survive and relieves some of their pain, and lets them know you are an option for them.
Use Your Customers’ Words in Your Copywriting
The more you understand your customer, the more you can speak their language. In fact, you should be actually using their language.
This is called the voice of customer data.
Create a word cloud with all of your customer reviews. Figure out the words that keep coming up. Use those words in the copy you create to explain your business.
Be prepared for the words to differ from the words that you might choose to describe your business. Marketers have a habit of creating content that is disconnected from the way their customers talk.
If you advertise your gym as "An epic cardiovascular event with full throttle fitness guides"...
But your customers say your gym is "A quality gym with quality coaches"...
Use the latter.
It's what your customers are saying.
Create Something Truly Helpful and Give It Away for Free
Different people will value different types of content based on their context, problem, and solution.
An e-book for a busy small business owner trying to get in shape is a bad fit. A short tutorial video that you put on social media and YouTube will probably be a better fit.
A super-fast explainer video for someone trying to learn some new software is also a bad fit. Instead, have a step-by-step post with screenshots and a numbered list.
Case-Study in Content Marketing: Productivity Game
Productivity game is a YouTube channel that gives book summaries of books that help make you more productive in business and in life.
Each video is 5 to 10 minutes. The creator does a voice-over of animation and helps people get the core message of each book.
This is valuable enough, but he has a super interesting call to action at the end of each video. He says, "if you would like a one-page PDF of the core message of this book, click the link in the description box, and I'd be happy to give it to you. If you have already subscribed to the FREE productivity game newsletter, this PDF is sitting in your inbox."
You can bet that the creator knows that his target audience values tips, tricks, and hacks, but also doesn't have the time to read the book. So he created not one, but two, things that solve this problem — for free.
So how does he make money?
He gets an advertising payout.
He gives affiliate links to both the book he summarized and the audiobook.
When people subscribe to his newsletter, he eventually asks people if they would like a collection of his book summaries in an e-book for a small price.
He also has a $10 dollar a month membership portal where people can get bonus features and themed e-courses on stuff like creativity, goal setting, and procrastination.
By knowing who his target audience is and creating valuable free content that builds trust, he has created a solid business and marketing strategy.
How Many Buyer Personas Should I Make?
Your long-time customers have different context, problem, and solution needs than the people who have never heard about your business.
A long-time customer may not have a way to share your product or service with your friends, while a stranger doesn't even know you exist and needs content that explains what you do.
You need to have some segmentation of your target audience.
Customers may also need content that addresses how to use your software platform, or what to do if they come across a problem with your product.
These different problems and solutions are different stages on the buyer's journey and each one requires a different persona.
A customer journey map shows the path that your ideal customer would take to find out about your brand, become a customer, and become a long-time loyal fan.
There are four main stages of the customer journey map:
Awareness: This person doesn't know you exist yet. They have no idea who you are. How will they get to know you? What will be their first impression? Will they find you from your blog or podcast? Will they need a webinar or an e-course?
Consideration: This person is looking for a product or service like yours. How are you different? How do you meet their particular needs? How do you compare to the others? This person will need to be convinced that you are the right fit for them.
Customer: Congratulations, you got the sale. Now what? Keep them on board! How do you get them to stay or buy again? Do you give them email discounts? Do you give them helpful how-to content to ensure they know how to use your platform?
Fan: They have decided to stick around, so how do you help them share the love? How do they give referrals, do you give them a code? Do you have a networking webinar? What kind of status-boosting swag can you create that incentivizes them to share your product or service with their friends?
You will need a buyer persona for each one of these stages because all of them have a different context, problem, and solution. Welcome to having a customer-focused business.
People often focus here on creating content to grow their customer base, but data has shown that focusing on retaining your existing customers is even more profitable in the long run than trying to get new customers. After all, it is 50% of your customer’s journey.
Summary
Know who you are creating content for in order to create content that people actually want and that is helpful. Remember, these are real people with real lives.
Find actual data through analytics, your sales team, customer reviews, and help desk tickets or emails. This allows you to know who your customer actually is.
Determine your customers’ context, problem, and solution and create content addressing their specific needs.
Use your customers’ words when creating content and make sure you are giving away some content that is free but also truly helpful.
Create a buyer persona for each stage in the customer journey.
Further Reading and Resources
Hey, I'm Clint.
I love to create content that helps businesses and agencies get better results faster