Want to Know Your Customers Better? Here's How Buyer Personas Will Help.

Wish you could get to know your customers better? What business owner doesn’t? Understanding what motivates your customers is key to growing a business.?And to understand what your customers want, you need to get to know them.?

Today I’m going to tell you about a simple tool to help you do just that.

It’s called a buyer persona, and it’s the perfect way to craft messages that appeal to prospects on a deep level.?Best of all, buyer personas are easy to create. And, you can add to them over time as you learn more about your audience.

I’ve helped several businesses build their buyer personas, with great results.

Buyer Personas: A Team Effort

“Okay, I’ve got one!” Angela, a customer support rep at one of my software clients called out. “Debbie is frustrated with the software because things aren’t labeled clearly. She’s not tech-savvy, so it's hard for her to use.”

“Do you hear that a lot from customers?” I asked in surprise.?

“Yeah,” she nodded, looking around the table at several other team members, who were also nodding.?

"Good to know," mumbled Zach, their UX designer.

It was noon on a Tuesday. The small team was gathered around a boardroom table eating Thai takeout as we brainstormed our personas.?

My client had been in business for years, but they’d released a new budgeting app recently. Sales had been low, and they were struggling to connect with the few customers who had signed up.?

They needed to dig deep and figure out where things were going wrong. I was leading their team through an exercise to help them understand their customers better. We were using buyer personas to do that.?

The purpose of the buyer persona exercise was two-fold:

• To understand how their customers wanted to use the product.
• To use that knowledge to hone their marketing message.

We’d created four personas so far, two prospects and two current customers. All of whom represented different genders, age groups and demographics.

After creating an initial draft for each, we’d opened the floor for brainstorming. We were getting some interesting insight.?With employees from every department in the company, we had information from a variety of touchpoints.?

As a result, the personas were filling out nicely.

“Let’s do two more,” I suggested, mid-afternoon. “Then we’ll make some copies, and you can all decide where to hang them in the office.”

“Oh, we’re displaying them?” asked Bess, a junior operations employee. “Why is that?”

“Personas help your whole team get to know your customers,” I explained. “So your customer experience stays consistent across all touchpoints with your brand. Displaying them keeps the information top of mind.”

“So anyone who talks to our customers understands them on a more personal level,” piped up Sam, another support rep.

“You got it,” I told her.

How Personas Help Define Your Audience

The key to earning customer loyalty is making your customers feel like they matter. Adding a personal element to your buyer experience helps customers feel like more than just a source of revenue. And that feeling is what inspires repeat buying.?

Everyone wants to feel valued.

Personas allow you to segment your customers into specific groups, then define the motivations of each group. If you understand motivation, you'll have deeper insight into purchasing behaviour.?

As in, what your customers want and how to give it to them.?And, that understanding deepens over time through continued interaction.

A Simple Process for Creating Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are easy to create. It's not a complicated process. But there are two things you need to do to make them next-level effective.

First, incorporate every scrap of research you've done on your customers. Include any information you have that helps you form a picture of who your customers are.?

Second, if you have a team, get them involved.?Creating personas is easier with input from the people who actually deal with your customers. So unless you're a one-person operation, that additional insight is important.?

Your Action Items for Success:

Here are three simple steps you can take to get started with buyer personas:

1) Get Prepared:

Define the market segments you want to reach, then gather your research about your intended audience.?Next, talk to everyone in your company that deals with customers. You can do this by conducting live interviews with sales and customer support people.

Also, you can (and should) ask your customers what they want and why they want it. There are so many ways to get this information. You can run a survey, or have your customer support team do some outbound calls, to name a couple.

If you've had paying customers for a while now, you'll have a good idea of who they are. Include that insight.

Round up all the information you’ve got when preparing to create your personas.

2) Sketch and Brainstorm:

Step two is where you fill out your actual persona. As mentioned, if you have a team, it's important to get them involved.?This applies to members of your sales, customer service and support teams.?

Sit down together and list out characteristics of your customers. Start with basic demographics and work your way up to a more complete picture. Feel free to meld characteristics from different customers.?

In the end you'll have a list similar to a character sketch for a work of fiction.?

Remember, you're trying to understand many customers in this exercise, not just one or two. So use your imagination and create the most realistic profiles you can with what you've got.

3) Display Your Personas

Be sure to keep your personas in a spot where everyone on your team can see them.

Why is this important??

Because buyer personas are not only useful for marketing copy. They also add to a consistent customer experience when used by all staff.?Buyer personas help your staff get to know your customers. And when you know your customers, you can give them what they want.?

Personas also make your marketing message resonate, along with your entire customer experience.

And that can transform your business.?

If you’d like to talk more about the process of developing buyer personas, get in touch with me today. The best way to reach me is through a DM right here on LinkedIn.

Rachelle Smerhy is a freelance copywriter in the alternative healthcare industry; she specializes in lead generation and content marketing and has written for businesses all around the world. Rachelle is also the co-founder of iApotheca Healthcare.