Defining Your Ideal Customers by Creating Buyer Personas
When creating a marketing plan as a business one of the first things that is often needed is a clear definition or description of what your best customer(s) look like. This would include not only their preferred service or good, but really more specifically focusing on what their daily life looks like, their core demographics, their job title (if they have jobs), do they have kids, families, homes, etc…
WHAT ARE BUYER PERSONAS?
Buyer Personas are created to represent your ideal customer(s) using generalized yet fictional characteristics. They allow you to better understand your customer(s) so that you can tailor your marketing efforts and content accordingly. In a perfect world you would collect data from some of your best current customers via interviews, user analytics, which would be used to segment your customers to better meet their core concerns, needs, and behaviors. Note: you may have anywhere from 1-3 core customer personas when you are a new business and this may grow into more personas as your business grows.
WHY ARE BUYER PERSONAS IMPORTANT?
By understanding the characteristics of your ideal customer(s) you can focus your efforts marketing to those that seem to be the right fit for your businesses’ services or goods. While it is common for many businesses - particularly ones that are new - to think that everyone is a potential customer, unless you narrow down your audience you will find it very difficult to be all things for everyone and in turn your business will suffer. By focusing your efforts on your best customer(s) will help you cut out the clutter and waste of previous marketing campaigns that were not aligned with your personas and potential put more effort and money into those campaigns that are more aligned -creating better return on investment overall.
Buyer Personas, Creating Content, Inbound Marketing