How to Create a Buyer Persona from Scratch for your Sales and Marketing

In today’s trust economy, companies are making more of an effort to reach out to customers about what they want, rather than telling the customer he/she needs the product. Creating a buyer persona is essential for sales and marketing teams interested in offering more targeted products that will ultimately lead to more conversions. In order to do so, sales managers have to do more than simply assume they know what their customers want.

How to Create a Buyer Persona

Here, we’re going to discuss ways in which sales managers can segment their leads and opportunities — through key demographics, purchase history, and other important metrics — in order to provide agents with context that can help them close sales and generate more revenue.

Research Demographics

This is one of the most, if not the most, important ways to build a foundation for a buyer persona. Demographics such as age, income, gender, race, location, and occupation all help to generate a unique persona of your customers in order to target them with more relevant products and services. If your business uses CRM software, you can collect this data to segment multiple customers into more organized groups.

Here’s how the demographics we just just mentioned play a role in creating the buyer persona…

Age

Age plays a significant role in determining what kind of products your buyers are interested in. If you want to sell high end shoes, but your business is in an area where the average age is 50-plus, the odds of those people wanting a nice pair of Nike’s versus New Balance are low.

Income

If your business is located in a low-income area, it doesn’t make good business sense to offer high-end products, and vice versa. Categorizing buyers by income is a great way for businesses to learn more about which products are suitable for every customer.

Gender

Regardless of your thoughts on gender roles in society, gender is still important to keep track of. Stores like Sephora, who’s main product line and marketing strategy is geared towards women, still offer men a small selection of products like cologne and lotions. Now men who are often overlooked can be targeted.

Location

Location is closely tied to all of these demographics. Where is the business located? If there are tons of children in the area, it might not be a good idea to open a liquor store; if you’re in a low-income area, you should rethink the luxury car dealership. Adding location to a buyer persona will help to specify and segment multiple personas for more targeted sales campaigns.

Occupation

Occupation also plays an important role that’s obviously tied to income, but perhaps you see that there are tons of police officers interested in your products. They could then be targeted with products and services that are similar to their line of work, like security, tools, or outdoors equipment.

Purchase History

Another great way to determine who your buyers are is by see what they’re actually buying. By looking at their purchase history, a business can see what products are successful. When combined with demographics, the business acquires deeper context in every single transaction and gives you an idea of what your buyers find important.

Without looking at demographics, purchase history gives businesses a unique advantage. If you’re an online retailer and you notice that outdoor equipment like shovels, saws, axes, and protective equipment are the most popular items, you can assume that they’re about middle class because these items aren’t cheap, they live in either the suburbs or a rural area, and that they’re male if they’re purchasing heavy equipment.

Combined, the reasons why certain products/services are so popular are more defined. When you know for a fact that your customers are, say, middle class males over thirty, you can target them more effectively by only offering products that fit within those key demographics, or have the buyer work with an agent who can relate to them.

Social Media Tendencies

Social media plays an integral role in all our lives. More and more people are using social media to purchase products and services than ever before. When you think about it, social media is like a premade buyer persona for businesses. The whole point is to be personal, to give people online an understanding of who you are without saying a word to them in real life.

The way buyers use social media and the platforms they use play a significant role in defining them. If your buyers only use Twitter, that’s indicative that they’re young and want quick solutions and interactions. If they exclusively use Instagram, they can be targeted with visually appealing ads. Plus, it shows that they have a smartphone, or at the very least, are able to access a computer regularly, giving away other details about their background.

How to Use a Buyer Persona

Now that we know what should be included in a buyer persona and why, let’s look at how we can use it.

• Use buyer personas to communicate with the buyer in more relaxed tones and conversations.
• Use buyer personas to segment your customers for more targeted marketing and sales campaigns.
• Use buyer personas to connect buyers with compatible agents.
• Use buyer personas for creating more precise buyer’s journeys and sales funnels.
• Use buyer personas to optimize and personalize landing pages.

The more businesses make an effort to understand their customers, the more likely they’ll see a significant boost in their sales efforts. In order to truly understand who their customers are, businesses often create buyer personas to give them an accurate estimate of who they’re dealing with and why certain products are more successful than others.

By looking at certain demographics, how customers use social media, and monitoring their purchase history, businesses can draft accurate reports that can dramatically improve the buyer’s journey, the overall customer experience, and sales campaigns.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Create a Buyer Persona from Scratch for your Sales and Marketing" was first published on Small Business Trends