The Ideal Client’s Buyer Persona in FOUR Easy Steps

It is the minor differences that separates a successful business from the failures. People who focus on perfecting the seemingly petty aspects end up creating a foolproof product. The same principles apply to branding.

Far too many marketing campaigns are designed for faceless users, construed simply from obligatory data points that lack meaning. Such branding attempts hardly do justice to the product or to the buyer.

If you are certain that your ideal customer is a 27-year-old working woman named Lisa who has two kids under the age of four, drives a Toyota and goes grocery shopping at Kroger you have the upper hand at visualizing and crafting a brand identity that resonates with her.

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, created using real-time data from your existing customers and market research.

Buyer Personas meticulously list out an organization’s structure and provide an insight for the company. A detailed buyer persona will help you allot your time and resources where needed and guide you through the product development and branding phases while maintaining equilibrium across the organization. Thus, helping you generate visible leads and customers for your business.

Now that you know what a buyer persona is and why it is important to create your ideal client’s buyer persona,let us delve into the details of How to Create said buyer persona.

1. Gathering Information

The first step to building ANYTHING valuable is gathering information. Once you have that out of the way you can move onto referencing the information for authenticity and sorting it out for future references. There are numerous ways how this can be done, but we will discuss the FOUR most effective processes here.

i. Ask your existing and prospective clients to answer a few quick questions about themselves and their online habits. The trick to extract irrelevant information is by offering your clients anonymity in return. People tend to be more comfortable answering questions when their names are not brought to the forefront. In order to generate greater participation, you could offer a gift or raffle to encourage people. You could also be upfront with your promises of not selling or sharing their responses to third-party vendors.

ii. Ask your sales staff to maintain records of every client interaction, which you can later analyze.The feedback can provide interesting insights into your clients’ online habits and concerns.

iii. Try and spot patterns in the data collected from the demographics for your current leads. You can take this process a step forward by adding more specific questions to the lead generation form.This increases the data inflow from the clients,helping you evaluate their behavioral patterns.

iv. There are numerous tools that can be used to conduct market researches and gather specific details about your clients such as their gender, age, occupation, social media and shopping habits, etc. Two of the most popular tools are Think With Google and Social Mention.

2. Asking the Right Questions

In order to get the right answers, it is important to ask the right questions!

Here is a list of 20 questions, broken down into three categories,to help you gather the maximum relevant information while designing a client’s buyer persona.

Personal Questions

Ask them about their age and gender.
What languages do they speak? If they answer with multiple languages,your follow up question should be about their preferred language at home.
What is their physical location?
What is their educational qualification? Follow up with questions asking details about their school and the degrees that they have earned.
What is their marital status?
Do they have children? If yes, how many and their ages.
What are their hobbies?

Questions Related to their Profession

What industry are they currently working for?
Have they every worked in any other industry? If yes, ask which ones.
What is their designation?
What tools or apps do they regularly use to carry out their official duties?
Does their work involve sitting in a chair the entire day or do they need to spend a major part of their day on the road?
What challenges do they regularly face in their professional lives?
What is their annual income?

Questions Related to their Online Habit

How do they spend their time on the internet?What do they browse or where do they go searching for information?
What social media platforms do they regularly use?
Do they research businesses online before moving ahead with a transaction?
When was the last time they made an online purchase?
What are their primary concerns while shopping online?
What was their last online purchase and how expensive was it?

3. Analyzing the Data and Identifying Trends

Once all the data is collected it is time to look at all the emerging patterns. Analyze your need for creating multiple buyer personas with the amount of information at your disposal. And create a negative buyer persona, which is an antithesis of what you are originally building.

The negative client personal can help you identify the type of client that you DO NOT want to work with,since, they might cost you money or not rake in adequate return on investments.

4. Bringing Your Ideal Client Persona to Life

This is the final piece of the entire puzzle and once you are here you can see the persona coming to life. However, there are still a few steps that need to be carried out before you can relish the final outcome.

a. Lend a name and face to your client persona.This makes it convenient to identify with them and makes them memorable. For example, working mom Mary, business owner Bob or college going Michael. Adding a stock photo brings their persona to life.

b. Share your ideal client persona with your team.This ensures that your team is on the same page with you,and helps them make informed decisions while dealing with the clients.

If you find this helpful, check out similar stories, and if you want a consultation with the pros at Searchmetry, talk to us TODAY! Don’t worry, we won’t charge you for the consultation, plus coffee is on us!