When thinking about what makes an idea distinctive, it comes down to individuality. Whereas a target audience can be thought of as a mass group with typical preferences, buyer personas are less general. One expert has described them as being equivalent to a buyer personality. The basic idea is to consider one person, such as a 22-year-old arts student who lives away from home, for example, whom you can persuade to make a purchase. Then, you should produce content which might tempt individuals like that to act.

Use 3 or 4 Personas

Many campaigns involve inventing three or four personas. These are given characteristics which could be seen as typical or relevant. For example, a site which is selling office stationery might build personas knowing that certain types of people typically make purchase decisions with regards to office supplies. There is arguably little point in trying to sell large volumes of stationery to casual workers, for example.

Make Them Real

The individual buyer persona should be given a range of characteristics. For instance, the age, income, gender, education and interests of an office manager may be relevant if you are trying to persuade them to buy stationery products. Feel free to give some freedom to your imagination at this stage, but there is no need to go overboard. You don’t need to extend the ‘interests’ section of the persona to the point where it becomes unrealistic or distracting.

Don’t Isolate The Buyer Personas

If you think back to the office stationery example, more than one individual may have a say in deciding whether to buy or not to buy a particular product. While there may be one persona with greater influence than the others, all of them might contribute to a discussion. Therefore including a secretary persona as well as an office manager one makes sense.

Take an Alternative Route
When making personas, social media can be a great help. Sometimes the likes of Facebook and Twitter will be useful networks to help with that. With some goods or services, it might be more effective to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn has 140 million members and can be an invaluable social tool. It is excellent if you want to find out important details about a wide variety of business people and organisations.

Consider Other Content Solutions
Whether or not you use LinkedIn, the use of buyer personas can be useful when producing better content. Content writing can be quite complicated, however, a whole range of things contribute to the success or failure of web content. Buyer personas may be a slight improvement on target audiences, but it is important to remember that they are also just one piece of a bigger picture.

Use Buyer Personas And Reach New Customers
“A buyer persona” may be a new term to some. However, it offers knowledge that may be a businesses best source for great advertising ideas. Buyer personas are fictional icons of your ideal customers. Businesses use buyer personas them to gain a deeper understanding of the purchasing pool and then implement that understanding to create concise advertising messages.

Buyer personas are descriptions of an ‘imaginary person’ who represents your typical customers. Add that to a professional marketing consultant’s educated speculation, and businesses can do a pretty smart job of anticipating consumers personal histories, purchase motivations, and product concerns.

You create buyer personas through communications with your target audience and data. They may include:

Research

Surveys

Direct observation

For best results and a view that goes beyond a businesses present intake, it will include an outside-of-the-box mix of consumers – both ideal and unlikely prospects, your current consumer reach, and those outside of your contact database who might come in line with your target audience. You’ll collect data that is both quantitative and qualitative to paint a image of who your ideal buyer/customer is, what they value, and how your solution fits into their daily lives.

Questions to Answer That Will Guide Your Research

Within your existing client base who is the most profitable group?

What revenue stream do you find the greatest “ease of doing business”?

What kinds of businesses and people within those businesses do you want to convert?

Regardless of how sophisticated we become with electronic and digital messages, nothing will give you the depth of feel and understanding for your customers like when you meet them in person. You can’t build personas solely using email surveys, focus groups or research reports. Leave room for the individual to choose. They may offer a glimpse of their world that you may have otherwise missed.

Without personal time with your consumers, there is the risk is that eventually, this lack of personal touch leads to products and marketing campaigns that don’t work. You may be building and aiming to market a product your customers don’t want.

Once the surveys, interviews, and one-on-one meetings have been analysed, sorted and tabulated into clear data, your buyer persona is clear. You have it! Now it’s much easier to craft that perfect message that really resonates, engages your target audience, and empowers your marketing so that you gain new customers.