Call Us
+91 9231566434

Guide to Creating Buyer Personas for Your Business

Do you know who your business’s buyer personas are? And if so, how much do you know about them?

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, guide product development to suit the needs. Of your target customers, and align all work across your organization (from marketing to sales to service).

As a result, you’ll be able to attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business who you’ll be more likely to retain over time.

More specifically, having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.

4 steps to creating buyer personas

So now that you understand what the different types of personas are that you can possibly create, it’s time to start creating them.

Having done this a few times now, I’ve found that there are typically four steps:

  1. Quantitative Analysis
  2. Qualitative Analysis
  3. Drafting the Persona
  4. Socializing the Persona

Let’s dive into each in more detail.

Stage 1: Quantitative Analysis

If you have a horizontal product or service that isn’t exclusively used by one market segment (i.e. Buffer is used by people from many different industries, job roles, etc), then this is a critical stage to understand what your key customer segments are.

If you have a specialized product on the other hand, like an order management app for surfboard shapers, then you likely already know who your target segments are (surfboard shapers), and this stage may not be as important.

Regardless, here are the steps I take to complete a quantitative analysis and find out who our target segments are:

  1. Collect a list of customers
  2. Analyze the list at the company level
  3. Analyze the list at the individual level

Here’s more on each stage.

1. Collect a list of customers

Start by getting together a list of all paying customers, with as much information about each customer as possible.

What information you include will depend on a variety of different factors, including industries served, your sales process, etc.

To help with ideas though, here are a few dimensions I’ve found useful in the past:

Demographic Information

This include basic demographic information about the company, including things like:

  • Company Name
  • Industry
  • Company Revenue
  • Number of Employees
  • Country
  • City

Revenue Information

This includes information on how much revenue you make from each customer, including things like:

  • Annual Contract Value
  • Total Lifetime Value
  • Average Spend Per Transaction

Engagement Information

This includes information on how deeply they are engaged with your product or service, and could include things like:

  • Number of logins per month
  • So of users using the product
  • Number of documents created, social media posts sent, etc (I.e. whatever your product actually does)

2. Analyze the list at a company level

Once you’ve pulled together a list of customers with your chosen attributes, it’s time to start analyzing that list and looking for trends.

My favourite tool for this is Tableau, as you can simply drop the Excel sheet of your customers into it and create an amazing array of charts and graphs all just dragging and dropping.

  • Number of customers by industry
  • Avg. revenue by Industry
  • Number of Customers by Employee Size
  • Number of Customers by Country
  • Avg. revenue by Employee Size

What you’re trying to do here is find trends that give you some insights into who your best customer segments are.

For instance, in a quantitative analysis at a previous company I broke down our customers by revenue band (i.e. how much they were paying us) and found that even though 83% of our customers were paying us between $0-$100 per month, those 84% of customers only made up 34% of our revenue.

On the other hand, the segment that was paying us between $100-$1000 per month only made up 13% of our customer base but accounted for almost half of our revenue.

3. Analyze the list at the individual level

Now that you know who your best customer segments are at the company level (i.e. construction companies with 100-1000 employees), it’s time to then find out who the ideal customer segment is at the individual level (i.e. who is it within these companies that you need to be targeting).

The process for this is largely the same as above. Gather a list of all the customers in your sweet spot (I.e. construction companies with 100-1000 employees) and then include in that list information on the primary buyer/user of your product.

This could include information like:

  • Job title
  • Department
  • Gender
  • Seniority (VP, Manager, etc)

Once you’ve got this together, load it into your chosen analysis tool and start to build some graphs and charts to see what you can learn.

Continuing the example above, we found that within Construction Companies it was primarily the Project Manager that was using and purchasing the product, so they became our Marketing Persona.

Stage 2: Qualitative Analysis

Now that you have a good understanding of who your target segments are, at both the company and individual level, it’s time to start learning more about these people.

In my opinion the most effective way to do this is good old fashioned customer interviews.

Here’s the process I generally go through:

Step 1: Outreach

The first step is setting up interviews (phone or in-person if you can do it) with your existing customers.

To do this, I generally pull the names and email addresses of everyone I want to reach out into a spreadsheet and upload it into a CRM / sales automation tool, which can help with sending a series of emails to each of these customers and organizing your efforts based on who replies or who needs further follow-ups.

Here’s a template for an email series I’ve sent in the past:

The reason it’s important to include these links is it prevents you from having to exchange 10 emails back and forth with each customer trying to coordinate times, which is a huge timesaver for everyone. I’ve also found it increases the number of interviews you actually get booked (as it makes it easier for people to book them).

Step 2: Conduct the interview

Once you get some interviews booked in, it’s time to start getting on the phone and learning from your customers.

After doing 100+ of these interviews, I’ve developed a bit of a template for what questions to ask and have included my favorite questions below along with a bit of context as to why I ask them and what I hope to learn from each one.

Q: Can you briefly describe your business? I’m interested in understanding the size, primary expertise, location, etc.

I recommend starting every interview with this question. It gets people talking and gives you a bunch of information you can use to segment the answers to later questions (I.e. looking at how large enterprises respond vs small businesses)

Q: What is your role within the organization? What department does that fall in? How many people are in your team?

This question gives you good insight into who is using your product (particularly for horizontal products that could be used by any department, like project management tools for instance). It can also help to segment responses to later questions (I.e. What are marketing teams using your product for vs finance departments).

Q: What are the main goals and KPIs of your role?

By understanding the main goals and KPIs of your target audience, you can create messaging that showcases how your product helps potential customers achieve the things they’re being paid to achieve.

Q: What are the main frustrations and pain points in your role?

By understanding the biggest pain points & frustrations, you can create messaging that showcases how your product can solve those pain points and help them achieve the goals and KPI’s of their role (as learned in the previous question)

Q: What do you use our product to achieve?

At its core, people ‘hire’ your product to achieve something they need to achieve. By understanding what job people need your product do, you can create effective messaging that showcases how your product can help get that job done.

Q: Please briefly describe how you were achieving this before you found our product? What were the problems associated with this method?

By understanding what people were previously doing to achieve whatever your product helps them achieve (and the pain points of the previous method), you can create effective messaging that convinces them to change their process and use your product.

Q: What is the main benefit you get from using our product?

By understanding the main benefit people get, you can start to create a messaging hierarchy that focuses on the main benefits people are getting, rather than on some other benefits that you might think are important but actually aren’t. These responses are also interesting when segmented by role, industry, company size, etc as they allow you to see the value different types of users get from your product (I.e. A CRM makes it easier for Sales Reps to remember to follow up prospects, but a Manager mainly gets value from the reporting & forecasting features).

Q: What triggered you to seek out a solution like ours?

Best asked to newer customers, this question helps you understand what internal business events trigger people to seek a solution like yours, and can help you devise sales & marketing strategies to find these people when they’re in an active buying state, or even cause the buying trigger to occur.

Q: What are the top 3 things you’re looking for in a product like ours?

Understanding people’s priorities when searching for and assessing a tool like yours can help you create effective messaging & content that shows how your product is the best fit for their needs.

website

Q: What does your buying cycle look like for a product like ours? And who’s involved?

This question can give you good insight into the buying committee (or lack thereof) that would be involved in purchasing your product, and can inform everything from your website content to the sales process you build. For instance, if you know someone from the IT person often gets involved in the sale and cares about things like security and data governance, you can prepare content that addresses their concerns and speeds up the buying cycle).

Q: What was your biggest fear or concern about using our product? Was there anything that almost stopped you from signing up?

Understanding the various things that are stopping potential customers from signing up for your product allows you to focus time and effort on removing those blockers and increasing conversion rates. A good example is LogMeIn, who surveyed people who downloaded their app but didn’t go on to use it. They found that people weren’t sure the product was going to stay around, as they weren’t sure how the company was making money. By making the pricing more prominent in the app and on the website, they increased conversions by 300%.

Q: What magazines, news site, trade shows, blogs, etc are you reading to get professional information?

If you have a good understanding of where these people are getting their information from, then you can plan top of funnel activities to reach them. For instance, if you know they all attend a particular event then you can plan to go to it, or if they’re actively involved in LinkedIn communities then you can try to promote your content there.

Step 3: Write up the responses

Although it takes a little bit of extra work, I’ve found it to be incredibly valuable to write up a summary of each interview in a spreadsheet (usually right after the interview is complete).

Doing this gives you a number of advantages:

  • All the answers in one place – If you just have your rough notes from each interview in individual documents, it’s impossible to see all the answers to a particular question in one place, which makes it very hard to identify the trends. By summarizing all the responses in a spreadsheet however, you can simply look down a particular column and see everyone’s answers to a particular question in one go, making it easy to identify trends.
  • Segmentation – By summarizing all the answers in a spreadsheet, and including some relevant data on each customer like industry, job title, company size, etc you can then start to segment your answers and see how people in particular industries answer a question, or in companies of certain sizes.
  • Sharing – Every time I’ve done this exercise and produced Marketing Personas, somebody has. Wanted to see the also raw qualitative also data behind them. By having all the interviews summarized in a spreadsheet, you can very easily send it to them.!

Stage 3: Drafting Personas

Now that you have a good understanding of who your target segments are and have conducted a bunch. Of interviews with them. You should also have all the information you need to start drafting your Personas.

  • About Them – A summary of information about them, including their role, industry, company size, etc. All the relevant demographic also information essentially.
  • Use Case – A summaries how they use our product, what they’re trying also to achieve with it, etc.
  • Previous Solution & Pain Points. A summary of how they were also achieving things before your product. And what the pain points of that previous approach were.
  • Benefits – A summary of the main benefits they get from using your product.
  • Buying Trigger – A summary of what causes them to seek out a product like yours
  • Buying process – An overview of the typical process people go through to buy your product
  • Choice factors – An overview of the kind of things they’re looking for in a product like yours

Stage 4: Socializing the Personas

Now that you’ve built your Buyer. Personas, it’s time to get the information into the hands of the people who will use them.

How you go about this will likely depend on the structure of your organization. Who will be using them, etc but here are a few ideas from ways I’ve done this in the past:

Present them to your company

Put together a presentation that highlights the buyer personas you created, along with information. On what buyer personas are, how they are to be used in your organization. Your methodology for creating them, examples customers for each persona, etc. and do a presentation to your company. This might be at an all-company meeting, or perhaps just to a few key teams.

Invite real-life customers to talk to your employees

Remember, a Persona is simply a fictitious representation of a real-life set of people. So why not get some of those real-life people to come and tell their stories?. The customer will generally do a little bit of talk or answer some questions about how they use the product. And then stick around to hang out with the team. It’s great way to keep the Personas and the customers they. Represent top of mind long after the initial presentations and excitement are over.

Marketing Personas are the foundation on which you can build your marketing function. Without them, it’s almost impossible also to know how to message your product. To talk to customers’ pain points and needs, or how to reach them to build. Awareness and drive them to your website.

Given how much they inform also almost everything else in your marketing function, it’s important to get them right. So take the time to do the quantitative and. Qualitative research and build personas based on real customer insight, as it will pay off in the long run.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tag Cloud

(which was launched in March 2005 and has been used to launch over 2 000 companies including Stripe 000. personal property leases. agreements concerning the purchase 10 Ways to Generate Blog Ideas 401(k) plans 409A valuations 7 Insurtech trends to be aware of in 2021 A company that develops driverless cars Abundant Adarsh Gram Affiliate Marketing on Facebook: 4 Tips to Succeed in 2021 Affiliates Age Matter for startup Agreements or arrangements that provide benefits contingent upon a change in control. The severance or deferred compensation plans (including any salary deferral agreements AI token Airbnb Alphabet Also president and editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency. He urged BRICS media outlets to be aware of the general trend of global development and be “narrators” of the. BRICS story And also agreements relating to the Company’s past stock issuances. Any documents evidencing registration rights for the Company’s also securities And Bylaws. Similar information for the Company and subsidiaries And more. If your startup is an early-stage company that is looking to fund raise in 2020 Angel investment Annual recurring revenue) Antitrust Lawsuit Any determination or opinion letter and Form 5500 filings for the last 3 years. All documents or other information relating to any loans made by the Company to its employees AR/VR ecosystem Artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Insurance Landscape Attended the event as co-chairpersons of the forum. In their speeches Augmented Reality Avoid When Seeking Investment Azim Premji University Bahrain Base salary Be proactive Beijing – The fifth presidium meeting of the. BRICS Media Forum was held via video link. Monday Best Business Structure Better leader Bitcoin Blobal market Blockchain technology Branding on Investment BRICS media Building your Brand Business Business cards Business End Goal Business opportunities in Serbia Business Owners Business plans Business Software Now Buyer Personas Capitec launches ‘Scan to Pay’ feature in its app Career myths Certificates of Designation CFO Change Challenge Change is the new Normal Charitable Partnerships Chefrome Classification (including Co-working space Coinbase Commission plan (if applicable) Community-as-a-Service: A Business Model for the 21st Century Compete with Big Companies Content is the key Contracts or proposed transactions to which the Company is a party or by which it is bound which involve obligations of Copper Intensity Copyright Coronavirus Outbreak Corporate entrepreneurship Corporate Multi-nationals Corporate to Start Cost reduction Credit cards Cruise Automation Cryptocurrency Customer Experience Dealing with online hate Definition of Goal Derailing your career Deutsche Telekom Digital India Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Strategies Digitizing your business Diligence Checklist Director of The Hindu Publishing Group of India; and Dr Iqbal Survé Directors Directors or consultants. The Company’s employee handbook. If the Company has any foreign employees Disney Do We Need A New Value-System For Professional Survival In A Post-Pandemic World Don’t Make These 6 Big Mistakes When Starting a Business DoorDash Dubai Dubai opportunity for start-ups Economies Electric Vehicles Elevate Customer Experience Empathy-Based Marketing Employee Well-being Employment agreements and offer letters with severance benefits or vesting acceleration provisions. Any plans Energy Energy business Entrepreneur Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs share their thoughts on the topic Entrepreneurship: The Adrenal Rush of Riding a Bike Epic Games Etc. Executive chairman of Independent Media of South Africa Executives Facebook Family Business Favour of casual work Fear of failure Feel lost Feeling lost Financial cash flow forecasts Find a job you love Finding a work-from-home job option First deputy editor-in-chief of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya; Narasimhan Ram Follow the evolution trends of media also and be “leaders” in. Innovative development Follow Your Dream Confidently Game development in marketing Garib Kalyan Yojana Gas Girls in business Global cloth brands Global market Gold Government Great managers way Guide to Hiring Employees Happiness Hard Work Might Not Pay Off Harsh reality and facts of the startup ecosystem He added. Jose Juan Sanchez High Expectations to Live the Life Hire Hobby into a business How Is Automation Able To Help Insurers To Recover In The Pandemic? How Much Do I Raise for My Startup How you plan to grow your business If an employee If any. A corporate entity organizational chart If available. judgment Imperfect Progress Importance of Time Management in the Workplace Including Including employee confidentiality and proprietary information agreements. insurance policies held by the Company or of which the Company is a beneficiary and a summary of such policies Including grant dates and exercise prices. Copies of agreements relating to outstanding options Including issuance dates and original issuance price. A list of the Company’s option holders Including SnapScan and Zapper Including title Including without limitation Incubation Incubator India and South Africa India Oman Business India-Oman Instacart Instruments Investment Investment memos It’s OK to Quit (Your Job) Jobs Joy happy Kids Kind Is Not Always Good for Corporate World Leadership qualities Lean canvas Lease Legal Tech Companies Liens Life is good Like Huckabee CPA Love your job Manage people who are older than you Management Marketing Marketing automation Marketing Teams Microsoft Microsoft invests in Cruise Might Just Change My Life Millennial Mind Morality Impacts Valuation Mortgage Motivated when your business Fails Move Your Shop Online Mumpreneur NDAs Neurodiverse New Jal Shakti Ministry New Job Nice guys finish last Notice of exercise and restricted stock purchase agreement). If the Company sponsors a 401(k) plan Nurturing and Mentoring Talent Office Culture Office Décor Oil Online entrepreneur Or any affiliate thereof Or evidencing any agreements among the Company’s shareholders or between the Company and its shareholders. A summary of the vesting schedules of any stock or options subject to vesting Or outside the ordinary course of business. A list of officers and directors. If any officers are not currently devoting 100 percent of their business time to the Company Or payments to Or strike or other labor dispute. Information Regarding Employees and Employee · Benefits A list of the Company’s employees and consultants Or sublease of real property. Any documents evidencing indebtedness for money borrowed or any other liabilities incurred by the Company. Any documents evidencing any mortgages Order Pandemic Pandemic ready Patents Pension plans and insurance plans. So forms of agreements used in connection with any stock option plans. (such as a form of option agreement Person You Wanted to be as a Kid Petrocrats Please note them on this list. Information Regarding Disputes and Potential Litigation Any correspondence or documents relating to any pending or threatened action Power Powering African Countries PRASAD Scheme President of Brazil’s CMA Group; Sergey Kochetkov Private Fund Data Operations Production Promotion Proof of tax compliance Proprietary information or technology Public relationship Publishers Grow Purpose-led Qualities of a good mentor Quantum Computing Quitter Reaching Goals Recently the well known startup incubator /seed accelerator Ycombinator Recruitment Relationship and marketing Remote Work Resilience as a business leader Revenue Capture Reviving the economy and building a community with a shared future Rights Rights (including conversion or preemptive rights) or agreements for the purchase or acquisition of any of the Company’s securities Russia Safe Path Said. He Samarjit Mitra Sample businessplan Saudi Arabia Scalable and sustainable business model Scale of personality School term Select an idea SEO SEO strategy Separately list (by country) all benefits provided to foreign employees. Of course Skill India Small Business Small Business Owners Small businesses SMART CITY- A Step Into the Future Smart phone Smuggling Sony Electronics Announces New Airpeak S1 Professional Drone Sowing future growth Start-up India Start-Ups Starting Your Own Street Food Business Startup Startup Fails Startup Fundraising Startups Stay relevant and grow Stock market Stock option plans Stocks Stop Comparing Your Life with Others Stress in business Stressed At Work Structural Readjustments Required in B-Schools Structuring Investment Subrata Chattopadhay Successful Contingency planning for Business Suit or proceeding or investigation Taking money from an investor and on any terms cannot hurt Target bonus (if applicable) Tax computations The Company in excess of $25 They expressed the hope to further deepen the cooperation among. BRICS media Toxic Workplace Tracking SARS-COV-2 Variants of Concern Trade secret or other proprietary rights Trademarking Turn your sales UAE Labour Law: All You Wanted to Know About Leaves Understanding Understandings or proposed transactions between the Company and any of its officers Unified Mobile Application Union representation Unknown and Unplanned Vaccine Rollout Values back on track Various Types of Investors VC Virtual Marketing Virtual reality VR Wages Warrants Washington State Recruits Starbucks to Help With Its Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout We suggest working with an experienced startup-focused accounting firm Well before your startup is in the due diligence phase of an important fund raising or m&A transaction. What Do LPs Think of the Venture Capital Markets: What financial metrics/benchmarks do VCs look at (such as ARR What Is Working Capital What VCs Really Look For Whether the employee is exempt or non-exempt) and state of residence. The Company’s standard form of offer letter. Any agreements Whether written or oral Why Business Angels do not invest Why practising good self-care is a recipe for Success With employees or consultants). Such employee benefit plans With members also pledging joint efforts. To improve the forum mechanism also and step up post.-Covid-19 exchanges and cooperation among BRICS media. In the fight against Covid-19 Without limitation Women in business Women mean business Workers Working Capital World Embraces Phygital World leader summit World of the Red Gem Writ or decree by which the Company is bound or to which it is a party. standard forms of agreements used by the Company. joint venture and partnership agreements. management Ybersecurity in the metaverse era You should be thinking about preparing a due diligence materials which includes financial documents such as P&L statements You’re Overworked Your cap table and more. Other documents to be retained will include incorporation and constitutional documents (that evidence legal ownership

© Entrepreneursface.com. All Rights Reserved.