Buyer personas are a critical first step for your marketing strategy. Buyers personas are semi-fictional representations that help you to understand your buyers and how to reach them. A well-defined persona is achieved through market research and data about your existing customers.
In order to develop strong buyers personas, you need information about customer demographics, customers’ role in an organization, goals, and their motivation to achieve them.
Ideal Customer Research
Since the personas have to be realistic, it is important not to assume anything and conduct in-depth market research. Therefore, marketing research can be both qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative Data
Qualitative research allows the B2B companies to gather information through one-on-one interactions with the customers. Direct information acquired through surveys and interviews from the target audience helps thoroughly know the sales trends, what customers think is important, and how they make decisions about a purchase.
Quantitative Data
Quantitative research includes collecting data from your own endeavors and gaining valuable insights about your target audience. This research helps in gaining information about the behavior and personalities of your customers. Social media is the handiest tool in marketing for quantitative data as it allows you to gain information about your ideal customers on a large scale.
Components of Buyer Persona
You can get the full view of your customers and elevate your sales if your buyer personas include the following four categories:
Demographic Information
Demographic information mainly consists of the information that will help you distinguish your ideal buyers. Since it solely depends on your business needs, demographic data can be extremely specific or extremely broad.
The Basics
1. The Basics
The basic information regarding buyer personas consists of the company size, job titles, and the industry they are associated with.
2. Online Spaces
Social media platforms are a significant way of knowing your buyer personas. You can get beneficial insights into what media platforms the customers utilize and their resources to follow the industry trends through different online spaces.
3. Keywords
Find what keywords would help grab your target audience’s attention and what words or phrases they are more likely to use when looking for services similar to yours.
4. Communication Preferences
In this section, you have to find out your buyers preferences regarding information resources and communication. For example, do they have time to read elaborated articles or engage in long conversations? Or do they prefer thorough research? Knowing this will surely help you engage with your customers more effectively.
Decision Drivers
5. Goals
Customers’ organizational goals can be probed through primary research. However, it would be helpful if you also determined the job titles, market trends, and the organizational hierarchy of your customers.
6. Attitudes
With attitude, knowing the emotions and tone of your customers is also essential as it would help you understand them better and fulfill their needs efficiently.
Fears and Challenges
7. Obstacles
Knowing about the obstacles that keep your customers from attaining their business goals will help you provide the most suitable and beneficial solutions to your customers.
8. Uncertainties
Having an idea about why some customers feel hesitant to purchase a thing would help solve their concerns through your services.
Role in the Purchase Decision
9. A day in the Life
Compose a summary “Day in the Life” of your buyer personas, including their daily duties, behaviors, and habits. This activity helps to humanize your persona, helping your team perceive things from the buyer’s point of view and gain insights into their motivation to purchase.
10. Barriers
Determining the barriers that can slow down your persona’s activities is also highly significant. Look towards your customers’ competitors for ways to overcome major obstacles.
Conclusion
Being a B2B company, you must use customer-centric strategies and know what exactly your customers want. And for this, assumptions never work effectively; only in-depth research does.
So put yourself in your customers’ shoes and know exactly how to target their audience.
At The Endurance Group, we have over 20 years of experience selling complex products and services. We are able to do this because we pride ourselves on deeply understanding our clients, their target audience, competitors and industry all together.
Why us?
We recently were included in Design Rush’s Top Portland Digital Marketing agencies (within digital agencies in Portland, Maine) and have several case studies to share that highlights both our and our client’s success. We are able to provide all of your sales and digital marketing needs remotely with a team of business development experts.
If you need help identifying your buyers’ personas, call us today: 207-407-9264