Who is our customer? How Buyer personas help businesses.

To succeed, a company must build itself around its customer.

Customer-centric companies using a Buyer Persona effectively can:

• Boost a company’s profit by about 60%
• Reduce sales and marketing costs up to 20% ?
• Acquire about 24% more leads,
• With up to 56% improvement in the quality of leads
• Reduce their sales cycles by about 36%Also increase user engagement by
• up to 100% more website visits,
• up to 900% longer length of visits,
• up to 171% more marketing generated value(Source: delve.ai, Cintell, Martechzone, ITSMA, Venturebeat, Mc Kinsey, Marketingsherpa)

?

Unfortunately, it is hard to make sense of staggering data available today to understand who our customer exactly is.

?

But what if you had a way of discovering customer types-most likely to say yes to your product.

?

Then your company’s resources would be focused on those few (niche) customer types or personas and

• Cost of customer acquisition would dip.
• Sales team’s efficiency would rise.
• Business would grow bigger at a faster pace. Can a massive database of customers age, gender, title, salary, etc help you reach this goal?

No, but it certainly is a starting point.

To uncover your true customer personas the raw data must go through many filters.

Let’s look at a case in point that highlights the need for buyer personas

A Banks’ wealth manager has a target to acquire many crores of Mutual Fund Sales (AUM) via digital/in person outreach methods.

A detailed demographic database of local, affluent, educated, decision making customers with large portfolios is handed to him.

So, given the competent salesperson he is, and the superb digital outreach team he has, he must have great conversions, right?

Only in theory…

In practice, one needs to dig deeper into this data for insightful answers before going for a sales pitch or content targeting:

• What is the composition/age of each portfolio?

A prospect with only ESOPs or stakes in vendor/family companies will likely not move it as he knows the current companies inside out.

• Is this customer interested in capital markets?

?Does he look for investment tips from family, friends, websites. That could be a positive sign

• ?Does he avoid asset reallocation?

?Is his portfolio inactive because of a negative experience in switching/reallocating stocks. Does he ignore looking up stocks even in a bullish market?

• ?How involved is he in his venture?

Would he rather invest incrementally in his business. Is he looking for business loans against his portfolio.

• ?Is he an investment specialist?

With sophisticated options like private equity funds, real estate investment vehicles or structured investments- such a customer rarely invests in mutual funds.

• ?Does he and his coterie have a trusted broker.

Large investors who work closely together with a single broking house will likely never move assets.

?

Now it is clear that before pitching on the raw data from

• Existing customers
• Competition
• Research Databases…

If they had been filtered to recognize,

• Cues to highlight undesirable traits (negative persona)
• Cues to find probable converting customers.

Then, this Wealth manager and his digital team would have created a leaner customer acquisition process by concentrating on the right ‘Buyer Persona.’

?

So, what is a buyer persona?

• It is a fictional representation of your target customer.
• It is only partly fictional because it is based on market research on real customers (of your product or competitors)

Why a buyer persona why not just demographics

Buying is not just a logical but also an emotional, psychological process governed by behavior, traits, interests etc some of which are

• Buying due to Fear of missing out

‘Everyone has it, I must have it too, real fast’. (read limited offer buyers)

• Buying as a way to feel good.

Tiding overs blues, insecurities, fear… remember shopping ‘therapy’?

• Buying as a way of keeping up.

Wanting to keep up with peers’ aspirational lifestyle.

• Buying as an Instant gratification

‘Saw it, liked it, Bought it’ philosophy.

• Buying as solution to perceived problems/risks?

E.g. Termite proofing house in advance.

• Buying on Influence:

Buying triggered by professional influencer/family/friends.

• Buying due to leaning:

Keep buying whether you need it or no, simply because your love the brand.

?

Therefore,

Knowing your customers persona can help you…

Build a customer centric business with insights such as

• Demographics
• Habits/ Behavior/Personality/Social/Lifestyle traits
• Motivations in life
• Pain points/Challenges
• Goals in buying your product.
• Consumption of digital content
• His go-to research tools
• His buy triggers.
• His influencers
• Why he prefers or dislikes your/competitor products.
• Wishlist products

When you analyze these elements deeply, patterns emerge and soon you have a few or many customer personas.

Now it becomes relatively easier for you to find more like these personas on a large scale.

?

Buyer personas give a laser sharp focus to every unit in your company particularly the Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and the Product Teams – because now you know exactly:

1.?? What filters to apply to a raw demographic, psychographic, behavioral data…

To find customers similar to your persona and keep your customer acquisition costs low.

2.?? What your product development plan should be.

Improvement in features requirement/ cutting down on frills customer doesn’t care about. Also, crafting new products that customers are interested in.

3.?? Which aspects of customer experience to improve.

?4.?? ?How to craft a tailored personalized pitch, marketing content that resonates with this persona.

5.?? Where to find this customer archetype for every part of his 6-step journey – brand awareness, evaluation, consideration, decision(conversion), retention and brand advocacy

For example:

• If you know your customer persona begins to learn about a brand from Search engines then your brand/ website must be optimized for it else you are out at the very first step of customer journey funnel.
• If you know your customer archetype persona, prefers searching for customer reviews in the comparison/consideration/evaluation stages on sites like LinkedIn/Twitter then your brand must be optimized for it.
• And if likes to convert at a physical store (decision/conversion stage), then offering freebies or coupons over there will speed up the process.
• If he is influenced by a particular Instagram influencer, then enrolling for his/her services will help him evaluate and consider your product further.
• If family and friends influence him heavily then find a way to address them in the customer journey.
• If he repeats purchases then, find measures to convert him into a brand advocate.Startups and research on Buyers persona

Industry newcomers / startups are often seized by a compelling intuition for a product idea that

• Caters to an unmet need.
• Could disrupt the way customers buy due to its innovativeness…
• Is confused with a fascination/ bias towards a product. E.g. someone who loves essential oils decides to start that business.But pause, dig deeper before going all the way.

A few additional insights put together painstakingly may save you a lot of resources.

?

How to build your customer persona:

Check out this free make my buyer persona template on Hubspot

Steps to building your customer personas

Step 1: Define the exact scope of what you want to achieve.

• Are you looking at improving an existing product?
• Or you want to launch a new product/ service altogether?
• Who are your competitors, what is their product and their customer profile?
• Deploy social listening on various platforms, gather data on who is saying what in the product segment you are targeting.
• Stay updated on relevant new product trends through Buzzsumo, Google trends. Step 2 Choose method of seeking information from customer sets.
• Quantitative: The survey/questionnaire method
• Qualitative: The interview method Step 3 Identify the data to work on
• If you are new to the industry, you may have to heavily rely on broad probable customer matches basis competitor’s customer profile. LinkedIn for instance can be a helpful in creating your B2B wishlist.
• If you are an existing player dig into

1. The existing customer data in CRM/ Google Analytic
2. Customers who enquired but never converted (during lead generation events.)
3. Abandoned cart data on the website.
4. Click, share, comment, followers’ data on social media.
5. Comments on external forums like Quora, Reddit
6. An external research agency.

?

Step 4: Seek interviews over online questionnaires.

Online surveys followed by incentivized interviews is a great way to filter data at two levels especially for newcomers with no customer data. This can get you inroads to potential customers.

• ?Interviews are more difficult to obtain but more helpful in clarifying answers thereby getting a clearer perspective:
• Try and incentivize the audience to participate by offering discounts/ coupons/ freebies/e books etc.

Step 5: Galvanize your whole team for the process.

No matter how small or big your team is- involve the customer facing teams to gather this data- especially the sales, customer service teams.

?

Step 6: Craft open ended comprehensive questions for prospects such as:

• What are their life goals.
• How does their typical day look like.
• What are their hobbies.
• What are their challenges.
• What is their favorite online shopping/social site.
• Where do they like hanging out with family/friends?

?

• Motivation /Goal to buy your product (or competitor product incase yours isn’t launched)
• What stops them from buying your product?
• What compelled them to buy- the triggers?
• What has been their experience?
• What do they appreciate about the product/company?
• What do they not like about the product/company?
• What could have made it better?
• What do they like/dislike about competitor products?
• Who and what influencing them to buy.
• How do they research before they buy
• What other products have they tried before trying this product, feedback on them.

Gather the base demographic details beforehand if possible so interviews can be crisp saving the customer time.

?

Step 6: Analyze the data for patterns.

Upon analyzing the data, some patterns will emerge …

From the previous example of raw demographic data of large portfolio customers, many will emerge as ‘Super- Savvy’ dabbling in multiple structured investment options.

While Super Savvy could be a negative persona for the Mutual fund selling wealth manager … The same customer may be the perfect persona for Liquid funds product as he frequently parks his funds there

?

Step 7: Organize the data into segments.

?Like Super - Savvy many customer personas may emerge. Name them, color them with personality, flesh out the details

Examples: ?

• Super Savvy Sam lives in South Mumbai, aged 30- 45, reads Bloomberg/Mint online, hangs out with Investment Bankers, loves intellectual discussions, has a portfolio of 1000 crores…. Looking for help in moving his funds in and out of Liquid funds but not interested in Mutual funds
• Restless Raina (aged 35-50 yrs), lives in the posh suburbs, portfolio 200 crores, loves trading, always on the lookout for stock tips, husband works in a research firm, loves sharing her expert advice on social media or forums. Wants to start building a safer portfolio with mutual funds/Bank deposits as a backup for the high risk trading that she does.

?

Step 7: Share these personas with all teams and tailor your strategies.

Make sure the updated personas are available to all teams. Sales teams, marketing teams, customer service can tailor their pitch, objection handling and the entire process upon identifying the persona. ?

?

Sharing pre-identified Customer Personas generation wise from Hubspot

The data here on how they consume content can be integrated and used to further strengthen a company’s buyer persona in your individual markets:

The latest HubSpot research says these about the generational personas for the US market: Sharing few points?

Gen Z (aged 18-24 yrs)

• Discover products through social media/Search ads.
• 33% have bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation and 28% in an in-app shop.
• Half of GenZ expect companies to take up a cause like climate change, gender inequality and that has a strong impact on their purchase decisions.
• 93% use social media for around 4 hours 20 minutes a day

?

Millennials (aged 25-35)

• Discover products through social media/search.
• 26% have bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation and 28% in an in-app shop.
• 41% of Millennials expect companies to take up a cause like climate change, gender inequality and that has a strong impact on their purchase decisions.?

Gen X (aged 35-54)

• Discover products through/search/tv ads/retail stores.
• 18% have bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation and 18% in an in-app shop.
• 35% expect companies to take up a cause like climate change, racial justice, affordable healthcare, income inequality, 38% felt companies shouldn’t engage with social issues and 26% were not sure.

?

Boomers (aged 55+)

• Discover products through tv ads/search/retail stores.
• 17% have discovered a product on social media in 3 months, 4% have purchased one on in-app.
• 50% feel companies should not take a stance on social issues, and this has no impact on their purchase decisions.

Making an accurate set of buyer personas for your business, is a tedious time-consuming task but once you have it and use it effectively, it will reward you disproportionately! #digitalmarketing #buyerpersona #startups #leadership

?

References

• Digital marketing for dummies: Stephanie Diamond
• Hubspot
• Ahrefs
• Digital scholar
• Dripify