In this article we will see what a buyer persona is, how to create yours for your online business, why it is so important to have this figure present and some online tools that will help you create your buyer persona.
What is a buyer persona
A buyer persona is a fictitious or semi-fictitious representation of your ideal customer or end consumer, which is created from market research and data on existing customers.
To do this, you will need demographic data, information about their behavior, as well as their needs and motivations. You will then be able to define profiles based on their needs.
Keep in mind that you can have several buyer personas depending on the audience segments you have in your ecommerce, but they still share the same purchasing need.
To create your ideal buyer persona you will need this essential information:
Demographics: name, age, where he/she lives, family situation…
Education: educational level and languages
Employment: profession and position, type of company
Leisure: hobbies and activities, interests
Social networks, favorite channel of communication, tools and programs used.
Goals and objectives
Main difficulties
In short, it’s about putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes to understand what they need from us.
Why is it important to have a buyer persona for your business?
Defining and always keeping in mind the buyer persona in your business gives you more context once you are going to sell your products, implement a new marketing strategy or launch an exclusive range of products.
This way, it will be easier for you to create your product designs, launch marketing campaigns with this target in mind and give them the information they need depending on the sales funnel.
In short, having a buyer persona in your online business is necessary to:
Attract more visitors to become customers in the future.
Build even more loyalty to your existing customers.
Know when, how and through which channels you can communicate with them.
Create and plan relevant marketing campaigns for them.
Design your products based on their needs.
Better understand your existing customers by taking into account their motivations, challenges and goals.
Difference between buyer persona vs. target or target audience
It is important to differentiate between a target and a buyer persona. They are terms that may seem the same, but in reality they are not the same.
The target or objective public does not have its own identity, unlike the buyer persona, which does have a name, surname and a well-defined profile. The target is the broadest view of a group of people, limited to demographic data such as age, place of residence and purchasing power.
Another factor to take into account is that while the buyer persona identifies several segments that share the same need, the target covers a more general segment of users.
In addition, the buyer persona is a tool that will help you to conceptualize your ideal customer in a fictitious but also more human way, giving them a face, name, dreams and frustrations. The target audience, on the other hand, is the realistic description, more or less scientific but also somewhat more abstract, of the market segment you want to address.
How to create your buyer persona
We know that defining your ideal customer is no easy task, but this representation of your fictitious customer profiles is key to the success of your marketing campaigns. The more information you have, the more you will know about your existing and potential customers.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to make a buyer persona as easy as possible:
Step 1: What your buyer persona is called
Choose a first and last name for this buyer persona. Even if you don’t think so, humanizing this avatar by giving it a name will help you visualize and identify it as a real person and have a persona archetype.
Think about how many buyer personas you could have in your online business: Do you think it’s okay to have two buyer personas? How about naming them Marta Diaz or Pedro Martinez?
Step 2: What are their demographics?
The demographics of the buyer persona matter. For example, knowing their age and education level will be useful to segment your leads and prepare your marketing strategies accordingly.
Put yourself in your buyer persona’s shoes and answer these questions:
How old is he/she?
What is their level of education?
What is their geographic location?
Does he/she live in a town or in a big city?
In addition to being able to better segment your campaigns, they will be of great help in positioning your brand’s message and defining the tone of your communications.
Step 3: What is their professional position and career path?
When building your buyer persona, it is essential to know their work and family situation. This will provide you with crucial information to build your landing pages with data that will solve this person’s pain points.
To do this, answer the following questions (imagining you are the buyer persona):
Is he/she working or not?
What industry does he/she work in?
How much do you earn monthly or annually?
What is the size of the organization?
What is your job title?
Do you have a position of responsibility or not?
How do you measure your results?
Are you married, single or separated?
Do you have children and what ages?
The more information you have about their career and seniority, the more you will know about their professional experience and understand their career aspirations and concerns.
It is also very important to know how he/she manages his/her family environment, that is, if he/she has a partner or not, if he/she has children or not. These data give you a more general view of the customer profile.
Step 4: What are the characteristics of their work?
By knowing closely the objectives and responsibilities of this buyer persona, you will know how you can help him to overcome his obstacles and achieve his goals. To do this, ask these questions about their job characteristics:
What are his goals and objectives?
What challenges does he face?
What responsibilities does he have in his job?
Answer these questions and you will be able to better elaborate pain points and touch points, and take them into account to meet your audience’s needs!
Step 5: Which communication channels do you use?
Another piece of information to take into account is to know in depth what tools or communication channels he uses in his daily life. That is to say, knowing if they use the phone a lot or channels such as WhatsApp, email, social networks (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter…), will allow you to know how to position your value proposition.
Ask yourself these questions:
How does it behave on the Internet?
In what formats do they consume information?
What devices do they use the most?
How do they prefer to be contacted?
When do they consume the most content?
Which social networks do they use most: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn or Pinterest?
Think that the more you know about this ideal customer, the more sales opportunities you’ll have. And keep in mind that obtaining data such as the operating system they use is also valuable to help you position your marketing campaigns. Be careful: an emoji may not be visible on Android, but it can be on iOS!
Step 6: How are their buying habits
Write down what their consumption and buying habits are like. As you can imagine, to promote and sell your products to these buyer personas, you must know (without fail) where they consume information:
What websites do they visit?
Or are they more likely to use social networks to search for new products?
What brands do they like the most?
Do they make their purchases online or physically?
How often do they shop?
Once you know how to answer these questions, you will be able to offer your content and products and launch your marketing campaigns to those channels where your niche market is present. And above all, use social media actively to reach new users in addition to your existing customers.
Step 7: What are their goals and challenges?
Although it may not seem like it, knowing the emotional side of your consumers will help you use emotional marketing techniques to win their hearts. In order to build that strong bond, it is crucial to know their goals, challenges and fears.
To make it easier for you, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and answer these questions:
What are you pursuing in the long term?
What goals do you want to achieve?
What challenges are they facing?
What fears do they have?
What products or services can make the road easier for them?
What are your challenges?
Try to define his ambitions and his fears before moving on to the last phase in order to generate your buyer persona.
Step 8: What are the questions that drive them to action?
Once you know all the 7 previous steps of your buyer persona, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about what are their frustrations and what desires they want to fulfill in their life. You have created your online brand with the objective of reaching those needs that some consumers have.
To find out how your products solve problems or improve the daily lives of your customers, ask yourself these questions:
How can your brand meet their needs?
How can your ecommerce help your customer achieve their goals?
What does the competition offer?
What products are best suited to my buyer persona?
Can my products be adapted to the needs of each of my buyer personas?
With these 8 steps, you will have defined your buyer persona to start the customer journey in your ecommerce. Now, where do you get the information and how do you generate this profile? Let’s see it in the following sections!
