What Are Buyer Personas and Why Do You Need Them?
“Buyer Persona” is a term you’ve probably heard thrown around in the business world more than a few times, but what all is involved in a buyer persona and do you really need to create them for your company?
At some point in your education, you probably remember learning about the 5 W’s – who, what, where, when, why…oh, and how. These are often taught as the basics of information gathering and an important tool for journalists, but they are also the six questions that will help you form your buyer personas and really get to know what’s driving your audience.
In it’s simplest form, a buyer persona is a representation of…
Who your buyer is
What they are trying to accomplish
What goals drive their behavior
How they think
How they buy
When and Where they buy
and Why they make buying decisions.
Your goal in creating buyer personas is to give yourself a deeper understanding of your buyers and their behavior. It’s not enough to simply know the demographic information about your buyers (18-35, female, married, etc.), you have to know the psychological factors that influence their decision-making and buying habits on a daily basis to make informed decisions about your marketing and sales strategies.
Creating buyer personas will not only help you develop content that motivates and resonates with your customers, but it will also help you discover what channels of communication are best used to deliver this information. With adults spending more and more time every day on digital devices, the “where” question becomes extremely important, and a little more difficult to answer.
That being said, taking the time to answer each of these questions will help you begin to develop a complete and accurate vision of what is driving your customers, and ultimately make your marketing and sales efforts more effective.
Ready for the next step?
Download our 20 essential questions to properly assess your business today to better understand where you stand in order to create the roadmap to your destination.