A marketer’s dream is knowing exactly who they are trying to reach with their efforts in the most effective way possible. This is possible by building buyer personas.
An ideal buyer persona will turn faceless customer data into 3D human portraits—humans who have a specific need for your product/service and are your core customers.
These personas are unique from industry to industry and business to business and will ensure marketing efforts are not wasted on an audience that is unlikely to use your product/service.
The information you need to start building a buyer persona is generally right at your fingertips. Your current customers and prospects are an excellent place to start. Clean up your contact list and determine how they could be encouraged to answer some questions about themselves. Consider personal interviews, polls on social media, gathering feedback from the sales team or studying your analytics and data trends.
Once you know how you are going to present your questions, you need to decide exactly what those questions should be. Think in terms of their user experience—what information will tell me how they will best connect with our marketing efforts? What specific problems or needs can we focus on solving?
In the beginning, it’s best to start with basic questions that won’t overwhelm you with unnecessary information as a result.
Now you can go from targeting a vague “forty-something mom” to knowing your ideal customer is “Baker Brandi” — a 35-year-old entrepreneur who owns a bakery, has three school-aged children, drives a foreign-model SUV, and shops at Costco.
And this is just the beginning with very basic questions. Your business will evolve, and so will your customers. As you learn more about them, you will develop additional specific and relevant questions—resulting in actionable personas used to produce relatable marketing campaigns that drive buyers to you over the competition.
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