How Buyer Personas Humanize Your Communications

The new decade changed the world quickly, and in ways many didn’t or couldn't predict. Now we’re all doing our best to adapt, adjust, and attend to business in a way that is efficient, compassionate, and human. Crafting messages that maintain that balance of empathy and still serve value are aided by well thought-out buyer personas.

Buyer personas are critical to long-term success. The process takes time, but if you invest in defining your consumers properly, your efforts will be rewarded tenfold. Maybe even a thousand-fold.

Wait, what is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a detailed, illustrated representation of your ideal buyer. Consider this an activity in creating a historical fiction character for your company. Historical because you should be using data representative of your most successful past and current customers. Fictional because they shouldn’t be an exact copy of a current customer/client.

Give them a name, we tend to like alliterative names because they are easy to remember, plus they’re fun; something like Marketing Meredith. Think about Meredith’s demographics, her professional life (is she a marketing coordinator or a CMO?), her challenges, typical objections to your products/services, her goals. Really paint a picture and think about who she is and represents.

Once you’ve fully fleshed out Marketing Meredith’s profile, consider what segments of your customers she doesn’t satisfy. You’ll likely need to create 3-5 buyer personas to characterize all your consumers. As we’ve said, this exercise takes time. Start by depicting your most ideal customers/clients and fill in the gaps as needed.

Sounds fun, but not convinced they’re necessary? Yes! But since you need some convincing here are...

6 Benefits of Buyer Personas for Your Business:

1. Gain a Better Understanding of Your Ideal Customer – Buyer personas enable you to envision your current and prospective customers in detail. You’ll gain a better sense of their likes, habits, demographic info, preferred shopping methods, pain points and more. Knowing them on a deeper level enables you to better connect.
2. Segmented/Targeted Marketing – One of the major benefits of buyer personas is that they enable you to segment your marketing campaigns. You can send personalized, targeted content to each persona. This personalization leads to better results and long-term relationships. You can communicate in their language, distribute using their preferred channels, AND customize content for where they are in their buying journey.
3. Increased Efficiency – With buyer personas, your marketing efforts become more efficient. Your campaigns hit the right target with less “waste”, often leading to more sales without additional effort or cost on your part. Time is money, and buyer personas help you save both.
4. Overcome Objections – When you know your customers’ pain points you are better able to prepare for and overcome their potential objections. You can customize your content accordingly and prepare your sales teams.
5. Better Partnership With Your Sales Team – Buyer personas are wonderful tools for a sales team. They give a clear understanding of whom they’re targeting. They can speak their language and communicate more effectively, whether on the phone, online or in person. (BTW, include your sales team in the project. They are on the front lines and hear firsthand their goals, desires, frustrations, etc.).
6. Identify Negative Personas – A negative persona is the opposite of a buyer persona. It identifies who you are not targeting. Defining this is important, because it helps you increase efficiency and sales productivity. You won’t spend time and resources chasing down the wrong customer, which can lead to a reduced acquisition cost. 

In short, by using your time to transform your “target markets” into documented buyer personas, you’ll be one step closer in aligning your sales and marketing teams.  You’ll be able to communicate to them in the manner and location they prefer. In essence, you’ll be able to treat them like humans (which they are) instead of simply “contacts.”

Ready to exceed your customers expectations? Contact us today and we’ll help you work through the process!