How to Create Customer Personas For Your Business
Knowing your target audience is vital for any business, no matter how big or small you are. If you don’t market your services to the right group of people, it could be a huge waste of time and money. So what goes into creating a customer persona? Keep reading to find out.
Buyer Persona
Let’s start with a buyer persona. This is created to help you visualise your ideal customer and help you determine how to market your product in an effective way. You might want to have more than one buyer persona as certain businesses can target two demographics but still want the same outcome. Either way, you need to establish at least one. You might find the whole process daunting but keeping it simple and realistic will help you get started.
Look at Existing Data
The best thing to do when creating a customer persona is to look at what customers you already have. This is the easiest way to collect data and establish who is currently interested in your products and services. Look at your current clients and think about what characteristics they have and if they can be sorted into certain categories. You also need to think about if these are the right customers for your business. If not, then it’s time to start from fresh but your current clients can give you some vital information to help get the ball rolling.
Creating a Profile
Once you understand what customers you currently have and what customers you want, it’s time to start creating realistic profiles that will represent your audience. On one hand, you need to think about the demographics of your customers such as their
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Job Title
- Marital Status
- Income
As well as the usual demographics, it’s good to think about some more psychological characteristics such as
- Personality
- Attitude
- Interests
- Situations
So when thinking about your customer, go through each one of these points and specify as if it was a real person. It’s actually quite helpful to create a name too as it will help it become more believable. For example, you might have a customer persona like ‘John Smith, aged 30, from Manchester who works as a dentist and is newly married’. This might sound silly at first but it will help everyone on your team to visualise the customer personas. This technique is used by many companies worldwide and is proven to be successful.
Marketing
When you have your final customer personas, it’s time to start thinking about how to market your services to them. Different groups of people will relate to different marketing techniques which is why it’s important to really understand where your customers will be finding you. Start with what marketing tools are available to you such as social media, email marketing, SEO, PPC or press releases. Even though it’s great to try them all, think about which ones your customers are more likely to use. If you match the wrong technique with the wrong customer persona, it might not show the result you wanted.
How We Can Help
Creating customer personas will help you in every aspect of your business and will also ensure that everyone in the marketing team is on the same page. It’s also important to have them for the sales side of your business for creating a better ROI and receiving high quality leads. Do you have your customer personas created for your business? If not, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. We’ve got the experience and knowledge to ensure we create the right personas that are suitable for your business and your business needs.
