Target Buyer Personas
The 'Ultimate Guide to Ideal Buyer Personas and Creating Yours'
Blog Series: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
Sometimes referred to as Marketing Personas. If you were standing in front of your ideal customer about to ‘sell’ to them, can you picture and can you describe exactly what they look like?
Visualise or imagine an ‘ideal’ image of your customer - this is what we call your ‘Ideal Buyer Persona (or Personas)’.
By putting a ‘face to the name’ and creating these ‘ideal people-personas’ that you are trying to attract, you can relate to your intended audience as real humans.
Having a deep understanding of your target personas (your ultimate customer), is critical to driving content creation, engagement, product and service development and growing your brand. Quite simply, this enables you to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right time.
You won’t be able to position what you’re selling (to meet customers’ and potential customers’ needs), without knowing precisely who they are.
Too many businesses ‘think’ they know who their ideal customer is but upon questioning, they have never really stopped to consider the granular detail that informs every engagement their customers will have with their business.
The more detailed you can get about your ideal buyers, the better:
- How well do you know your ideal customers’ backgrounds, their goals, and their challenges?
- How well do you understand their interests and needs? Do you know how old they are?
- Where they went to school? Whether they have kids? What a day-in-the- life looks like?
Buyer personas provide tremendous structure and insight for your company.
So (in Marketing Terms) what Exactly is or Defines a Buyer Persona?
Exploring further and deeper, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional or fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals.
For reference, demographics include: age, race, gender, family size, religion, ethnicity, income, education (statistics) and psychographics are things like interest, habits, personality, values, ethics, morals, opinions, attitude, lifestyle (behaviour).
Why is a Buyer Persona Important?
- inform every part of your business and brand,
- from marketing strategies and sales playbooks
- to new product development
- help identify where your ideal customer spend time on the internet
- guide product and service development
- Buyer personas are an essential component of any inbound marketing campaign. Without them, you’re like Iron Man without his AI assistant - flying blind.
Finance Manager Melanie. Landscaper Larry. Caregiver Cassy. These names refer to personas: fictional, generalised representations of real people.
Here’s a sample of what a Buyer Persona might look like...
Now that you have a grasp on what a buyer persona is and why it is so important, make sure you subscribe to this blog to receive and automatic notification when the next blog in the series is posted.
This series walks through the journey to creating your very own Buyer Personas for your business, company or organisation. Prefer a fast pass? If you like what you've seen here and need a complete guide to get to build your ideal Buyer Personas right away, you can access everything you need to know in the comprehensive guide to creating your buyer personas.
Written by Glenn Miller
An exceptionally experienced digital marketer, proactive and future-forward thought leader, I deliver exceptional customer experiences, industry leading digital strategy and superior marketing results.
