How to Create Buyer Persona

Who is a Buyer? They are people who you want to address. They maybe your customers already or people who are your potential customers. They are people who you want to love you and trust you. These are the people who you want to build a community with.

How to identify your Buyer.

1. By your product

The ice cream or milk product is obviously targeted at children but you will also target mothers because they are the usual decision makers for the consumers or children in this case. Similarly, a milk product that is a health supplement made for young women will be targeted towards them. You may add a note that a part of such an audience will be young women who maybe earning and are independent. Why? Because they are taking their own decisions and spending money on what they feel right.

Is your product or service expensive? In other words do you want only a privileged few who can afford it to have it. This may be because cost prices are high and you would rather provide your customer with a better product or service than cut costs. That reduces the number of buyers but you are comfortable with that. In this case your buyer is a person of expensive taste and doesn’t mind paying top dollar if your product or service satisfies him.

If you are a blogger then you should consider yourself as a service provider. Your Buyer Persona is the one who is interested in knowing more about the subject or niche you write about and look forward to your next blog. You write about health and your audience is a health freak or simply someone who likes to keep himself fit while he goes about a normal life. Maybe you write about cars because it is your passion and your reader could be someone who shares your passion or simply one who believes that if he has a car then taking care of it is his responsibility.

2. By the place they live in.

This is the land of demographics

The internet gives you a huge landscape and you can reach a global audience. However, it is not necessary that your content is for everybody you can reach. You may want to work with a certain community or people of a certain city or town. Your buyer persona may be anywhere in the world and would like to buy your product or service because not many people are offering it.

By sex and gender

It is also important to be sure that you know your consumers age and gender. Maybe what you are selling is only for women, and young women at that. Maybe it is for teenage boys or older men or women. It is highly possible that your buyer persona may overlap. It could be for teenagers in general or women above a certain age etc. But understanding and segregating each segment will help you target them together and individually.

Why would they want to buy the product?

Psychographic

Now we have entered the realm of psychology. This is a vast but an important area to consider. It includes everything that goes on in the head of the target customer you have identified by your product and demographic.

3. By mental satisfaction

Everyone lives in their own reality bubble
The more closer social media has brought us to people we have never met the stronger the reality bubble has gotten and people are more convinced about their choices.

To para phrase Eugene Schwartz, people nowadays are not buying food. They are selecting food that gives them a taste of what people around the world are eating. They want not just the taste but a choice  that says something about them as a person. They are people who have tasted Mexican food or Italian food. A privilege not everybody can afford. They are selecting food that has health outlook. Low carbs, high protein. They are buying expensive sports cars to travel to office not because the cheaper alternative does it inefficiently but because this one can touch 300 Kms per hour. Will they use that feature? Probably not but You get the idea.

How do you recognize different personality traits?

Well! You can make a calculated guess. Find out what he or she does. Is s/he an executive, a business owner or a worker in a factory? What are his or her aspirations and goals? What music does he listen to? What kind of places he or she frequents for entertainment or when eating out? Who is he or she a fan of – sports persons and / or film stars. Brands of other products he is loyal to – soap, shampoo, toothpaste, motor bike, car? If you really look at this information you will see a person emerging from all the data. You may have to overlook certain information or segregate your target into different categories, but here you can create what in marketing terms is called a ‘Buyer Persona’.

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional person that you will create to identify your customer. You will give him a name – preferably something that helps in identifying him or her. Like IT Network Indu or Software Programmer Sanjay or Accountant Akash. As you can see the names become interesting at the same time give an instant idea who the person is. Then you start giving this person a personality based on the research you have done on the target persona. You fill in enough information that your fictional character starts looking like a real person. Here is your start to focus on creating blogs, advertising copy, social media blog posts and all kinds of marketing efforts towards this person. It will be like you are making a product or selling a service to a single person and it makes your job easier.

You can create more than one persona but make sure you don’t over do it and create confusion for yourself.

To make a persona you can take the help of Facebook audience insights.

If you already have a certain number of people as your customers or people who are genuinely interested in your product or service then interview them for more information and feedback regarding your product. What they liked about the product/service? What they did not like about the product/service? What could be better? Face to face interviews can help you be comfortable in asking personal details that people may avoid on the phone or a questionnaire. Details like goals and fears.

You should also interview people who have left your brand and chosen your competition. Find out why they did that.

Negative persona

Build a persona that you believe you do not want to target surely. This could be personality traits income levels that you are sure you do not want yourself or your team to waste time with.