The Importance of the Buyer Persona

The key to success in any branding, marketing or digital campaign is to understand your audience. A fundamental principle of this is to recognize and define your buyer personas.

“A buyer persona is a detailed description that tells the story of your ideal customer. It describes the important characteristics of the individual that will buy from you.”

A buyer persona is important because it gives perspective and helps define insights into your audience. So many businesses I talk to have 1. Never heard of buyer persons or 2. They have heard but don’t believe that it is necessary to define them on paper anyway. The point is that most businesses tell me they know their audience but I have one question for them. Are they selling to this audience? We all have ideas of the audience we should be selling to but are we selling to them? Comparing your buyer personas to your actual buyers will answer that for you in a heartbeat.

A buyer persona portfolio should be a fundamental part of every marketing strategy. It will help shape your brand, your creative and target audience. Here are two simple examples. A client of mine makes dentures and without discriminating on the age we know that 90% of his target market is in the 60 plus age category. Based on this we decided that we would not be focusing most of our marketing efforts in snap chat and Twitter. We would engage social media but the social platforms of choice would lend to the demographic in question. Another client whose business is in the apparel industry has a product that is heavily influenced by millennials and we needed to understand where this audience spent their time, in order to target them. We also needed to understand their needs and wants, their problems and how to build trust with them. A detailed buyer persona portfolio enabled us to do just that, proving that a detailed persona can amplify your marketing success.

However, there are many instances of a business that has a mixed demographic or products or services that cater to specific demographics that need to cover all categories. The key to success here is to understand what their needs are, in other words, you are marketing the same product or service to a category of people with different needs i.e. you must approach their problem individually even though you are selling them the same product or service. This is why I refer to building buyer personas as part of a portfolio or suite of personas. If done right at the outset the personas will add serious value to your marketing activities.

The key to success in any branding, marketing or digital campaign is to understand your audience. A fundamental principle of this is to recognize and define your buyer personas.

“A buyer persona is a detailed description that tells the story of your ideal customer. It describes the important characteristics of the individual that will buy from you.”

A buyer persona is important because it gives perspective and helps define insights into your audience. So many businesses I talk to have 1. Never heard of buyer persons or 2. They have heard but don’t believe that it is necessary to define them on paper anyway. The point is that most businesses tell me they know their audience but I have one question for them. Are they selling to this audience? We all have ideas of the audience we should be selling to but are we selling to them? Comparing your buyer personas to your actual buyers will answer that for you in a heartbeat.

A buyer persona portfolio should be a fundamental part of every marketing strategy. It will help shape your brand, your creative and target audience. Here are two simple examples. A client of mine makes dentures and without discriminating on the age we know that 90% of his target market is in the 60 plus age category. Based on this we decided that we would not be focusing most of our marketing efforts in snap chat and Twitter. We would engage social media but the social platforms of choice would lend to the demographic in question. Another client whose business is in the apparel industry has a product that is heavily influenced by millennials and we needed to understand where this audience spent their time, in order to target them. We also needed to understand their needs and wants, their problems and how to build trust with them. A detailed buyer persona portfolio enabled us to do just that, proving that a detailed persona can amplify your marketing success.

However, there are many instances of a business that has a mixed demographic or products or services that cater to specific demographics that need to cover all categories. The key to success here is to understand what their needs are, in other words, you are marketing the same product or service to a category of people with different needs i.e. you must approach their problem individually even though you are selling them the same product or service. This is why I refer to building buyer personas as part of a portfolio or suite of personas. If done right at the outset the personas will add serious value to your marketing activities.