When we own a business, we tend to only think about the product, and often leave aside who’s it actually aimed at and whether it’s the solution that solves their problems or needs.
This is why it’s so important to have a well defined ‘buyer persona’, to know what their needs and interests are, and to connect in a more direct way.
Read More: How to Build Broad Audience Pools to Effectively Test a Product
What is a Buyer Persona?
Buyer personas are those who have a series of common characteristics and specific needs, pains or desires to be solved by a product or service offered by the company. It’s an ideal customer who defines the group of people that the product is addressed to.
For example, let’s say we sell women’s mountain sports shoes.
In this case, we will have to find out what specific characteristics this ideal customer has and ask ourselves a series of questions to find out what they’re looking for in our product:
- what do they value in a pair of mountain shoes?
- Is the design important or are they only looking for comfort?
- What average price are they willing to pay?
- What are the biggest problems they’ve had with previous shoes?
These and many more questions are important to ask to understand the messaging to convey when advertising directly to your ideal customer.
If our buyer persona are women between 30 and 40 years of age, who like mountain sports, are looking for comfortable shoes but also for a nice design and want them for frequent excursions with friends. We agree that by creating an ad with the image of a woman (30-40 years old), walking in the mountains, surrounded by a group of people in the background and a headline stating “Comfort and style for walking in the mountains”.
This will create a stronger connection, than if we put the image of a couple in their 20s, saying “The best sneakers to do sports with your partner”.
There must be a prior investigation to collect all that information. Having a technical sheet of the buyer persona helps greatly segment our target audience, to create the copy and creativities of the ads.
Buyer persona information sheet
Demographic
| Age | |
| Gender | |
| Civil situation | |
| Country or countries | |
| City or cities (more specific if is necessary) |
More concrete profile
| Level of studies | |
| Job position | |
| Salary range | |
| They have children? | |
| Civil status | |
| Do they buy online? |
Interests and behaviors
| Interests | |
| Influencers or referents | |
| Movies, TV series, TV shows
Magazine or books |
Wishes, pains, what do they value
| What do they value most in a purchase? | |
| Customer issues | |
| Dreams and wishes | |
| Objections to the purchase | |
| Tried before without success? |
*The more extensive the information, the more you will have for the content creation.
Ways to research the ideal customer:
- Reviews are testimonials of the customer who have already tested the product. If you don’t have a lot of reviews, you can check out your competition and see what their customers are saying.
With reviews we know the reasons why they have consumed the product, the expectations they had before consuming the product and what they value about that product.
Reviews from Google, website, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube are the biggest source of information.
- Surveys are a very good way to extract information. Google Forms allows us to easily create surveys to send to all those friends, acquaintances or trusted customers who fit the ideal customer profile to get information.
- Forums and blogs that talk about the same product you sell. There is a lot of valuable information out there. The writer goes into detail about his opinion, the pros, cons, and sometimes even what you can do better.
Without researching your ideal customer, it’s difficult to properly understand our ideal customer leaving a gap in your advertising.
Understanding the buyer persona is crucial for selling more effectively.
