Using Buyer Personas to Target Your Audience

There is no doubt that buyer personas are essential to a small business’s marketing efforts. They help you really get into your customer’s heads, giving you insight into their values and motivations. As an excellent opportunity to grow or revamp your business’s outreach attempts, it’s worth investing time and research into buyer personas. So, today, we will be getting you started with a few tips for building buyer personas, where to use them, and how to keep them relevant.

How To Create a Buyer Persona

As a simple definition, buyer personas are made-up representations of real people in your target audience. They should have names, jobs, and lives outside of work. Basically, even though you may never meet “Sally Sales” in real life, you know how she acts, what she likes, and the best ways to market to her.

The best place to start with a buyer persona is with research. How are people finding your content? Where and when do they prefer to interact? Are there any particular products they’re talking about?

Utilize information from your salespeople. What can they say about the leads they interact with on a daily basis? What services are people most interested in, and why? It may also be worth surveying or interviewing a few of your repeat customers to get a new perspective on your business and how you can best serve them.

Once you have this information, pick up on common themes from case to case. These ideas will form the basis of your personas. From here, you can begin filling in details such as demographics and motivations. The last thing to do is give your persona a name and begin shifting your efforts to match their expectations.

Use Your Personas

Now that you have your personas fleshed out, you can begin using them. The ways in which these personas can be employed are just about endless, but here are a few suggestions:

Content Creation

This is a very straightforward way to implement a buyer persona. You should have a general idea of what kind of content your persona enjoys consuming and the topics that would be appealing. You should also know where to advertise your content, based on where your target audience tends to spend their time. Is Facebook the place to get news out? Or Instagram stories? Let your persona be your guide.

Always be sure to use the language that your target audience uses. You want to try to relate to them and create trust. Employing their lingo and nuances on your platforms can help with this.

Shift Marketing and Selling Efforts

Now that you have a stronger sense for your audience’s values, you can redevelop your marketing approach to get customers’ attention and better meet their needs. You’ll know what their pain points are and how you can help them. This is especially helpful in advertising and creating the message that is most likely to get you in contact with potential patrons.

Find Co-Marketing Opportunities

Since buyer personas are helpful for refining your marketing voice, they are also conducive for finding co-marketing partners and helping to inform campaigns. Maybe it’s a brand that’s trying to target a similar audience with complimentary services. You could also partner up with a company that is more well-known by your personas with a brand that they respect. Either way, the efforts will be more seamless with a clearer idea of who it is you’re marketing to.

Stay Up-to-Date

No matter the results of your research for creating a buyer persona, it’s important to regularly check this information and update when necessary. You don’t want to end up talking to an audience that isn’t right for you anymore, or appear tone deaf by sending the wrong messages. Also, you don’t want to risk sending the right messages on the wrong channels because your target audience recently decided they aren’t using them anymore. Like the people they are based on, buyer personas should be constantly changing. This will keep your content and marketing efforts fresh and relevant.

With all this in mind, creating a buyer persona comes down to knowing and sympathizing with your audience. They want to connect with you and consume your content, so do the research and get on their level. They will be grateful for your efforts. Need a partner to get started?