{"id":57296,"date":"2021-09-21T07:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net\/?p=57296"},"modified":"2021-10-28T09:54:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T16:54:08","slug":"how-to-create-buyer-personas-for-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net\/blog\/marketing-strategy\/how-to-create-buyer-personas-for-marketing.htm","title":{"rendered":"How to Create Buyer Personas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Do you feel like there are brands that really “get” you? Do their values, brand imagery, and product messaging inspire you to do more, learn more, or buy more without being too pushy? That brand is focused on helping you meet your goals, learning what you like and don’t like, removing your obstacles, and building a dialogue with people like you as brand loyalists. And it all started with creating and evolving a buyer persona.<\/p>\n

Every brand hopes for audiences to find them and stick with them for a lifetime. That’s like hoping your first pecan pie turns out perfectly baked; possible, but not likely without some planning. Personas are the recipe for a well-targeted marketing strategy and can get you closer to the possibility of engaging lifetime customers. Taking the time to understand the different types of personas and then building one that is relevant to your business will help your company focus its marketing budget on the right audiences and channels.<\/p>\n

What is a Buyer Persona?<\/h2>\n

A persona is an overview of a fictitious person <\/a>who has a background, personality, goals, and behaviors that are similar to your ideal or current user.<\/p>\n

It can be created based on quantitative or qualitative research efforts and used as a foundation for understanding a company’s buyer journey. Many personas include demographic information, job titles, motivations or challenges, and channel preferences of the ideal customer to help guide the marketing and sales teams.<\/p>\n

Why Are Buyer Personas Important?<\/h2>\n

Although this might seem like a fair amount of work to get your marketing engine started, doing your research can save you time, budget, and frustration with your potential customers. Using a persona will help you get in the heads of your target audience and focus your advertising and content strategy plans<\/a> in the months ahead. If you need help convincing your manager of why you need to pause and create a persona, here’s your short list:<\/p>\n

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  1. Save time:<\/strong> You can use the personas to develop your initial editorial content around topics your audience wants to read instead of what your company believes is most valuable.<\/li>\n
  2. Save budget:<\/strong> You’ll have baseline targeting to work from instead of guesswork or assumptions from leadership, which should result in some early indicators of engagement. Having personas will also give you a foundation to begin A\/B testing<\/a> and learning more specific information about your user’s journey sooner.<\/li>\n
  3. Keep your team focused:<\/strong> It’s inevitable that many new projects, innovation, content, and website updates are revenue-driven. Use your persona to remind you and partner teams what new products, features, content, events, or videos are the most important to your users, the current and prospective customers who will actually provide that revenue.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Three Types of Buyer Personas<\/h2>\n

    There are many different types of personas across digital marketing and other industries. When determining what type of persona(s) to develop, you should consider your product lifecycle as well as your access to data and actual users. Let those inputs and your initial research drive the type and quantity of your buyer personas.<\/p>\n

    For some B2B companies, three researched-backed personas are helpful for engaging marketing and sales teams in communication with end users and leaders\/decision-makers. For some B2C companies, one data-supported persona might be enough of a foundation for a marketing plan. What matters most is putting forth the effort to build at least one focal persona that will keep you answering your user’s<\/em> questions, instead of your own.<\/p>\n

    At Portent, we keep these three types of buyer personas in mind when building a content strategy and marketing plan for our clients.<\/p>\n

    Focal Personas<\/h3>\n

    A well-developed focal persona will guide your digital strategy and keep you in conversation with your current customers. One focal persona should be developed to represent each type of user your brand engages with most often.<\/p>\n

    Think about the people who already advocate for your brand, comment on your social posts, become immersed in your content, and spend money on your products or services again and again. You could gather quantitative insights from them through social media polls or email surveys. Some review of Google Analytics or heatmaps could also provide data on the most consistent conversion paths, device usage, the top landing pages, and the most engaging pieces of content on your website. All of this information can support your persona development and refine your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

    Do those followers have similar life and job experience, motivations, and demographics? Or could they be broken into two to four groups with distinct differences that would affect your marketing strategy?<\/p>\n

    If you need to keep your marketing and sales teams focused, lean into developing and referring back to your focal personas above all else. It will represent the voice and face of your customers who provide ongoing revenue, feedback, and on-site behaviors for A\/B testing.<\/p>\n

    Once you have these personas in mind, you can more confidently prioritize budget, content calendars, new site features, and more.<\/p>\n

    “Eh” Personas<\/h3>\n

    An “eh” persona could be used to represent a fair-weather customer or an aspirational partner. They are not loyal to your brand, but you hope they might be in the future. They might be the lead type your sales team refers to as “hot and cold,” where extra effort is required to engage them.<\/p>\n

    You might not have as much quantitative data from your website and paid channels about this audience. Yet, you could utilize some qualitative insights<\/a>, focus groups, or testing to learn more about them.<\/p>\n

    These personas could help guide new areas of innovation or audience testing. Or they could be used to identify gaps in your brand’s user journey; why are these customers not engaged? Is our brand not answering their questions?<\/p>\n

    Overall, ‘eh’ personas are less relevant to your day-to-day marketing strategy. Do not spend a lot of time and money trying to complete this type of persona or reeling in these users first. It will not be worth the effort. Yet, when you’re questioning how to innovate in a new channel or grow your market share, their perspective might be invaluable.<\/p>\n

    Exclusionary Personas<\/h3>\n

    An exclusionary persona defines the users in which you should not<\/em> invest any additional time. These personas illustrate when there are clear mismatches between users and your brand. Customer audiences represented by these personas could be a waste of time or resources, or they could be a drain on your social media and customer service conversations. Distance from these users and personas will be better for your brand over the long term. This type of persona could be utilized to train your sales team, test new channels, or teach new marketing team members who not to target.<\/p>\n

    How to Create Buyer Personas<\/h2>\n

    Creating a buyer persona requires time and attention to what’s happening with your users today, what affected their engagement with your brand in the past, and what impact you believe they will have on your organization and priorities in the future. Remember, this persona-building exercise is for learning about your current and potential customers, not just their interaction with your website and advertising. Here are a few layers of engagement to consider before you dive into your research strategy:<\/p>\n