We all would like to have customers who are crazy for our professional brand, who would willingly buy every single one of our products and tell everyone to support us don’t we?
And the secret to getting raving fans lies in understanding who your fans are first, and what they want. Thankfully with well-researched customer personas, we can make this a reality with customer insights marketing. Read on to find out how.
Wait, What is this Customer Persona Thing?
Customer Persona or Buyer Persona is an imaginary person to represent a group of people who will ideally be your customers. Interestingly, they were created to help web designers’ test the user-suitability of their websites, but it has now extended to become a critical part of the marketing process.
Through your customer persona, you’ll gain deeper customer insights on the needs of different groups of potential customers and your existing customers. This means you can give more compatible products, services, and information. Just imagine your customers are telling you the exact product to sell them and giving you hints on the possible up-sell items they’re interested in. Noticed how much easier business would become.
Ask Anyone this – What Makes People Decide to Buy Something?
Some would say that the choices people make are influenced by many factors such as their age, gender, purchasing power, social background, awareness, nationality, recent events and the list can go on and on. But one thing you’ll hear successful marketers telling you is this…
“People buy on emotion and back it up with logical reasons for the purchase”
Because we all want something that makes us feel good or happy or excited. Think about this, why do we chase after all the latest fads, the latest smart phones when all we really need is a phone with a calling function? And in most cases, the answer is because it makes us look good or trendy. Sure the useful functions of checking email, surfing the net and so on but the consumer behaviour behind it is interesting isn’t it?
Now supposed we could name the various psychological reasons that make us excited to buy a product, or more specifically your product or services. It becomes a lot easier to encourage your customer to buy from you doesn’t it.
Here’s How to Light Up Your Marketing Darkness with Buyer Personas
Marketing is a critical area of business operations no questions asked. Now imagine that there were two similar competitors, selling the same product, the same process and the same background. But one of them is struggling to make ends meet while the other is enjoying more sales than the company can manage.
What made the difference?
It is really all about the difference in their marketing strategy to pull in customers, offer them the product or service they want and giving them the best possible customer service ever. And with a customer persona, you can take your marketing beyond the drawing board by creating very specific promotion and offers they want.
Think about this, if you needed a professional website created, would you prefer to get a clean and professional website service that is a cost-effective investment or a highly complex e-commerce website that is high on your budget and with an equally high learning curve?
But Can this Knowledge Change Your Marketing Results?
You bet!
I have an insurance advisor friend who is just starting out in his career and it is a common struggle at the beginning to start building a list of clients and growing the business. Naturally the aim is to gather as many customers as possible to make ends meet.
And it becomes a crazy game of numbers as you cannot tell which person you meet is a potential lead. But think about this, suppose he were to choose a specialization and really understood his target audience, their needs, their problems and where to find them, he might find his marketing approach much easier.
And as the internet grows in popularity and people are becoming more knowledge-oriented and are seeking information better suited for their needs, interestingly, it has become easier to find them with some basic research skills.
Zoom in to Your Customers with Pin Point Accuracy
Ever seen highly skilled marksmen who can fire with such eagle eye accuracy and strike each one of their targets? Naturally we know that they spent years of training but at the same time, their choice of weapon plays a significant role.
In the digital marketing space with a range of content tools, they act as your digital marketing weapon don’t they. Some customers like ebooks, others images, infographics, videos and so on.
Give them what they want then sell them what they need.
Get them interested in your offer and more importantly in you. That’s better than trying to find something on the spot to sell them right? Take time to nurture every lead and you can get started easily when you have your buyer persona to rely on.
The Big Question – How to Create a Customer Persona?
The following are some steps to help you get started on creating your own consumer persona:
- Identify your target audience, their demographics, their place and so on, the more information the better
- Prepare an interview questionnaire and a short introduction
To make your respondent comfortable, ask the interviewer to start with a general introductory discussion and then shift to specific ideas, products, and services etc.
- One-on-one interviews with many from the target group
Usually, data collected from about 30 interviews should give you an idea of the general trends. Remember to conduct the interview in a setting where they can feel comfortable – we want genuine answers
- Analyse the collected observations to show similar responses and document them down
- Conduct a second round of research to further interview people with similar views i.e. it is possible to create multiple personas for each of your product
A rule of thumb is to use the information from about five to seven respondents to get an idea of your customer persona
After the second round, you will be in a place to define the marketing message that will impress each group and make them continue choosing you.
Give your customer personas a name and if possible look for a photo to represent this persona. This helps all staff within your organization better understand your customers better and in turn can offer a better customer service and experience.
It may take a little getting used to in the beginning, but as you review and strengthen your persona, you’ll discover even better results for your business. Do you have some experience using personas in your business? Share some of the struggles or benefits you gained from using a persona in the comments below.
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