Buyer persona – how to build it

In today's business world, understanding your target audience is essential to the success of any marketing campaign. One of the most effective tools to achieve this understanding is the creation of a Buyer persona. Or to put it another way, a representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data obtained from your existing customers. In this article, we'll discuss the importance of Buyer personas and show you step-by-step how to create them.

Why is it important to have an established Buyer persona for your business?

Creating the perfect customer can help you better understand your customers and their needs. By creating a detailed profile of your ideal customer, you can create the right marketing campaigns that address consumers' specific pains and fears. This leads to higher efficiency, increased customer loyalty and of course higher advertising return rates.

In addition to helping you better understand your customers, buyer personas can also help you to:

• Create new opportunities: by analyzing your perfect customer, you can identify new markets or customer segments you may not have considered before.
• Improve your product or service: your perfect customer model can provide you with valuable insights into the features and benefits your customers value most, which in turn could improve the services/products you offer.
• Optimize the sales process: when you understand your customer's decision-making process, you can optimize the sales process to make it better aligned with their needs and preferences.

How to build the model of the perfect customer?

Creating a Buyer persona goes through several steps, which we will tell you about in detail in a moment. If we've already grabbed your attention with how important it is to have a model of the perfect customer, here's how to do it:

Step 1: Study

The first step in creating the perfect customer profile is research. This may involve analysing your existing customer data, conducting surveys or interviewing your customers. The goal of this research is to identify common characteristics and behaviors among current buyers or users of your services. This way you can draw out the commonalities between them and shape your perfect customer.

Here are a few tips to help you conduct effective research:

• Analyze your existing customer data. This can include data such as age, gender, location and purchase history. By analyzing this data, you can identify common characteristics and behaviors among your existing customers.
• Conduct surveys. You can use various online tools to create and distribute them. Be sure to ask questions that will provide insight into your customer's needs, pains, and motivations.

• Interview your customers. You can conduct interviews in person, over the phone or via email. Be sure to ask open-ended questions that allow customers to share their thoughts and opinions in their own words.
• Use social networks. You can use tools like Facebook Insights and Analytics to analyze the demographics and social behavior of your followers.
• Conducting market research. You can use resources such as industry reports, competitor analysis, and online forums to gather information about consumer needs and preferences.

The key to effective research is to collect as much data as possible from a variety of sources. Once you collect the data, you can use it to create a model of the perfect customer that will guide your marketing campaigns and help you not only understand your customers better, but also communicate with them more effectively.

Step 2: Identify the demographics

The next step is to identify the key demographics of your ideal customer. This includes factors such as age, gender, income, education and location, but also other information you'll see in a few lines.

Identifying the demographics of your target audience is an important step in creating an accurate and effective Buyer persona. Here are a few tips to help you do just that:

• Collect data on age, gender, location and purchase history.
• Research the demographics of your target audience. This can include analyzing industry reports, competitor analysis, and online forums.
• Test and refine your perfect buyers: once you create your buyer personas, test and refine them based on feedback from your customers and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Once you identify key demographics, you can create a more accurate and detailed buyer profile that will guide your marketing activities and help you better understand your customers.

Step 3: Identify their goals and pains

Identifying the goals and pain points of your target audience is an important step in creating an accurate and effective profile. By understanding your target audience's goals and challenges, you can tailor your marketing messages to meet their needs and pains. Again, you can gather this information through the ways already mentioned above, namely: customer interviewing, market research, etc.

Step 4: Understand their shopping habits

Understanding the buying habits of your target audience is another important step in today's task. To that end, you can do the following:

• Use online tools such as Google Analytics, for example, to analyse the behaviour of visitors to your website. This can help you understand how they interact with your website and where they drop off in the conversion process.
• Research the competition to identify common trends in the shopping habits of your target audience. Examine their marketing messages, sales strategies and customer reviews to find out what works and what doesn't.
• Use additional tools like Hotjar or Yandex Metrica, for example, which will show you through videos and graphs how users behave on your site, where they click and where they hesitate. Both tools have a free and a paid version, so you can choose which is right for you.

Step 5: Create Buyer persona

The final step is to create your perfect customer based on the information you have gathered. This persona needs to include name, age, occupation and any other relevant characteristics. You should also include a description of his or her problems, challenges, and shopping habits.

To summarize, here are once again the points to bet on when creating your perfect customer profiles:

• Define demographics: Start by defining the demographics of your ideal customer. This can include age, gender, income, education level, and location.
• Identify their pains and challenges: identify what your ideal customer's pains and challenges are. What motivates them to make a purchase? What problems do they need to solve?
• Understand their behaviour: find out how your ideal customer behaves in different situations. How do they research products or services? What channels do they use to communicate? What influences their buying decisions?
• Consider their emotional needs: consider the emotional needs of your ideal client. What values are important to them? What emotional benefits do they seek from your products or services?
• Create a personal profile: collect all the information you have received and create a personal profile. This should include a name, photo and a detailed description of your ideal client's characteristics, goals, challenges, behaviors and emotional needs.

Creating a Buyer persona can be time consuming, but well worth the effort. It helps businesses understand their customers better. By creating your perfect customer persona, you can develop a deeper understanding of your target audience and build stronger relationships with your customers. Also, this profile (or profiles) can help you build stronger relationships with your customers and ultimately increase your revenue.

Model with sample questions:

Basic information

• Name:
• Age:
• Paul:
• Occupation:
• Level of education:
• Location:
• What are their main pains and challenges?
• What are the biggest challenges they face?
• What prevents them from achieving their goals?
• How do you usually research products or services?
• What channels do they use to communicate?
• What influences their buying decisions?
• What is their preferred payment method?
• What factors influence brand loyalty?
• Emotional needs
• What values are important to them?
• What emotional benefits do they seek from your products or services and how do you help solve their pains and challenges?
• Personal information
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What do they do in their free time?
• What are their favourite brands and products?
• Personal profile of the buyer
• Give your buyer a name and create a detailed description of their characteristics, goals, challenges, behaviors, and emotional needs.

We hope you found the article useful. And don't forget - once you've created your perfect client's profile, tailor your communication as if you were talking to that person in the profile. We're sure this will quickly impact your results.

See you soon!