How To Create The Ultimate Buyer Persona For Your Marketing Efforts

Helen Siswanto
4 min readJun 17, 2022

When you’re planning to launch a new product or service, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target market is. But what do you do if you don’t know who your potential customers are? In this article, we’ll outline a research method that can help you identify buyer personas and build an effective marketing strategy based on them.

Defining buyer personas

A buyer persona is a representation of the target consumer you’re selling to. It helps you prepare better proposals and understand how they might think, feel, and behave. By creating a persona, you can also avoid common mistakes that sellers make.

There are many ways to create buyer personas. You can use surveys, focus groups, or interviews with buyers in your industry to get an idea of who is buying what, when, where, and why. Once you have a good understanding of who your buyers are, you can begin to develop specific buyer personas for each stage of the buying process.

  • The first buyer persona is the potential customer. This persona represents all the potential buyers who could be interested in your product or service.
  • The second buyer persona is the decision-maker. This persona represents the people who will actually buy your product or service.
  • The third buyer persona is the user. This persona represents the people who will actually use your product or service.
  • The last buyer persona is the end-user. This persona represents the people who will actually benefit from using your product or service.

By identifying these personas and developing profiles for them, you can better understand how buyers think and behave.

The buyer persona research process

When creating buyer personas, it is important to keep in mind that not everyone who will be interested in your products or services is the same. To create a more accurate buyer persona, it is necessary to research the different types of buyers who could be interested in your product or service.

There are four main buyer personas: problem buyers, decision buyers, ideal buyers, and influencers.

  1. Problem buyers are those who look for solutions to their problems. They may search for a product or service that can help them solve a specific issue or meet their needs in a specific way. Problem buyers are often quick to buy and are usually the first to try out new products and services.
  2. Decision buyers are those who make decisions based on what is best for them. They weigh all the options and choose the option that best meets their needs at that moment. Decision-buyers are often more committed than problem buyers and are more likely to switch to a new product or service if they don’t like it.
  3. Ideal buyers are those who have an image of what they want their life to look like and what they think should be included in it. They often have high expectations and are willing to pay extra for products and services that meet those expectations. Ideal buyers are the most likely to try out new products and services before deciding if they’re worth buying.
  4. Influencers are those who have the power to change the way people think or behave. They can influence a lot of people, which can lead to sales for a product or service. Influencers usually have a large network of friends and followers, which makes it easy for them to spread the word about a product or service.

By understanding these four types of buyers, it is easier to create buyer personas that accurately reflect who would be interested in your products or services.

How to create buyer personas

If you are looking to create buyer personas for your product or service, there are a few things you need to take into account.

  • First, it is important to come up with a specific target audience for your product or service. By doing this, you can better understand what needs and wants these buyers to have. Once you know this, it is easy to create buyer personas that represent this target audience.
  • Second, it is important to consider the different stages of the buying process. By understanding these stages, you can better identify which persona would be most interested in your product or service.
  • Finally, it is important to remember that buyer personas are not static entities. Instead, they should be revisited and updated as necessary so that they accurately represent the current state of the market and the needs of your target audience.

Testing the buyer personas

When building buyer personas, it’s important to test them to ensure they are accurate representations of your target market. This can be done through interviews, surveys, and focus groups.

One way to test the accuracy of your buyer personas is to conduct a customer journey analysis. This involves mapping out the steps customers take when considering a purchase. By understanding what triggers buyers to take each step in the buying process, you can better identify which persona best represents your target market.

Another method is to perform A/B testing with different buyer personas. This allows you to see which persona motivates customers the most to buy your product or service. By fine-tuning your buyer personas based on these results, you can create templates that more accurately represent your target market.

Conclusion

The process of curating a buyer persona is an essential part of effective market research. By understanding who your target audience is and what they need, you can create targeted content that will resonate with them. There are many different research methods available to help you build a buyer persona, but the most important thing is to be flexible and adapt as necessary. If you follow the steps outlined in this article, you should be able to develop a buyer persona that accurately reflects your target audience.

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Helen Siswanto

Don’t be surprised when stuff here is random. I just LOVE to write. Available for hire. www.helenthewordsmith.com