A buyer persona is a composite sketch or bio of a fictional person who represents a key segment of your customer base. It includes demographic information, that person’s role, his or her challenges and goals, and a snapshot of what that person’s typical work day looks like. Most marketing platforms like Hubspot or Marketo encourage their users to make personas as a best practice, and you can find some examples here. [http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-examples]
By creating a persona for each of your customer segments, you establish a clear picture of that person. It puts a “face” to the customer as your marketers develop and execute their marketing plans. I’ve found them to be very effective particularly when crafting marketing content.
That said, I was skeptical of the practice at first. I knew who my customers were and didn’t see the benefit of personas. Once we started to incorporate them into our marketing process, the benefits became clear. This is what I learned:
1. You probably don’t know your customers as well as you think. Writing personas force you to look at your customers more closely. You might know the demographics and roles of the people you sell to, but how deeply do you understand what they do day in and day out? Or who they interact with at their companies? You don’t need to do a lot of research to write a persona, but it’s a good idea to get feedback from your colleagues or perhaps a customer or two so that you can create a sharper picture.
2. Not everyone on your team has the same picture of your customer base. A sales and marketing team will have people with different levels of experience or customer interaction. New hires will be at the beginning of the learning curve. Having personas for key customer segments helps ensure that everyone sees the customers in the same, proper way.
3. Differences among your key customer segments might be greater than you realize. The first time I wrote a set of personas, I quickly saw that the way we were marketing would not resonate with some of them. Key differences among the segments came to light in the process. I knew about them before writing the personas, but the process of writing the personas forced me to take them more seriously.
4. You write better marketing copy when you can visualize who you are writing for. Personas bring the pain points and aspirations of your customers and their businesses into sharper focus, and that focus help you make your marketing content more compelling.
5. Your marketing becomes more targeted when you use personas. Not only does your content become more relevant to your customer, but personas give you another tool to help segment your customer base more effectively. I found that by making minor tweaks to campaigns based on the personas, I could boost response and conversion rates. In the end, that’s what you want from any marketing tool.
