If you look back on any successful inbound marketing campaign, you will be sure to find set, defined buyer personas. In fact, developing a buyer persona is a crucial aspect of your campaign!

It’s extremely difficult for marketing and sales to get their feet up and reel in leads without actually knowing who they’re targeting. Think about it: in order to be even remotely profitable, the marketing team needs to know who they’re marketing to, and sales needs to know who they’re selling to! It’s Marketing 101, and believe it or not, developing a buyer persona is much more complex than you may think.

So if you’re developing a buyer persona, or are already developing a buyer persona, check out these questions! You need to see if you actually know what goes into developing a buyer persona, and if you’re optimizing them to be the greatest little lead generators they can be!

If you still need assistance when developing a buyer persona, give us a call at IMPACT and learn how we can help!

Alright, onto the list!

Questions to Ask Yourself When Developing a Buyer Persona

1. What is a buyer persona?

Well first thing’s first. If you’re developing a buyer persona, and you don’t actually know what a buyer persona is, then things aren’t going to go very well. So I think we should start there. A buyer persona is basically a category or a group of your customers with similar characteristics and traits. These include location, demographic, goals, concerns; pretty much any way you could want to organize your target market can be sectioned into a buyer persona. They can tell you what your customers want, based on their user history throughout your site. They are extremely useful tools that can drastically improve your lead-to-customer conversion rates.

2. Do different types of customers buy from me for different reasons?

If so… you’ll want to put them into different segments. If you treat each of these groups differently, then you increase your chance at making the sale. When your company successfully separates your customers in this way, you understand what they are looking for, and exactly how to treat them to make a sale. Say Joe Smith’s car dealership has two different types of customers: one looking to buy a new car, and one for a used car. He wouldn’t try to sell a brand new car to a customer looking for a used car, would he? Now yes, this is a very obvious example, but the principle still applies when any business is developing a buyer persona.

3. What do buyers in each of my segments look like?

There are a lot of characteristics that can go into developing a buyer persona, and all of them can help further specify the target market that you’re seeking. Even the most unrelevant topic could help you make a sale. This information is also very easy to attain; just ask! Are they male or female? Married? Are they a CEO or a secretary? How old are they? Do they have kids? Do they like kids? Do they live in an even-numbered house or an odd-numbered one? Favorite color? Seriously, any little bit of information that can help create a “profile” for your buyers will help you develop a buyer persona. It creates a personal relationship that will paint you a clear picture of your buyers.

4. What are my buyer persona’s pain points? 

The point of your business is to solve people’s problems. Whether you know it or not, you’re a problem solver. Now take this and run with it! Some people are affected by problems in different ways than others. Go into extreme detail; find out every little speck of information about your buyers, and see exactly what rubs them the wrong way, and why.

Going back to Joe Smith’s car dealership: a high end business mogul might get upset with buying a Ferrari with the wrong shade of leather, while a teenager just out of high school wouldn’t even dream of being annoyed by that. The differences among your buyers’ pain points can define them into buyer personas, and create a totally new, totally necessary, approach for selling to them. Developing a buyer persona doesn’t have to be difficult, you just need to be able to adapt to what your customers are affected by. If your company solves their problems, it won’t go unnoticed. You’ll have not just more customers, but quality customers willing to work with you!

5. What are my buyer persona’s objectives? 

Your buyers have different goals. Bottom line. But now that you know their sore spots, you can understand what they want, and what’s important to them. Use their pain points to give them something that they want to solve this problem. Ask yourself, what would get this client really, super excited about my product? Then give it to them! This shortens the sales cycle, and pretty much develops the persona by itself.

6. Where do my buyer persona’s go for information?

This is another characteristic that is important to developing a buyer persona. You need to know how people attain information, and ideally information about your product. If your business appeals to teenagers, then you wouldn’t waste time and money at an expensive trade show, you’d be on social media, making yourself seen by your buyer persona. If you make yourself prevalent in all the ways that your customers look for information, then you will be seen and you will get traffic.

7. Why do my buyer persona’s buy from me?

When buyers come to your website, what do they expect to get? What from your product will they expect? How long do they plan to be on your site? When will their problem be solved? These are extremely important so that you don’t leave your company frustrated and annoyed. If they are coming to your site, they know what is going to happen. That is why they come to your site, and that is why they will use your company for their solution.

You need to know what they are looking for, so you don’t disappoint! Keep your customers happy! The nature of your business and the needs of your buyer personas will define what they get when using your company, increasing sales and customers!

8. Why don’t my buyer persona’s buy from me?

Let’s face it, no business is perfect, and probably even worse; not every customer is going to be happy with your company. Well, why? What turned them away, and why aren’t they coming back? You probably have come across a few common problems throughout the time you’ve been in business, right? Well, make these issues priorities!

Like I said before, don’t expect every single customer to fall in love with you, but if you can make improvements you can definitely decrease this number, or lessen the severity of these common issues.

Make your user experience tailored to what the people want, and for the things that can’t change, make them as friendly as possible for all of your buyer personas. This is critical when developing a buyer persona! So get on those improvements!

What else have you done to create awesome buyer personas? Let us know!

If you need help developing your buyer personal, contact IMPACT and we’ll help you get started!