How to Define Persona for Buyers

Are you wondering how to define persona for your buyers? Defining buyer personas is a fundamental component of a successful content marketing strategy. It’s important to have a strong understanding of your potential customers to craft compelling content that will turn casual browsers into buyers.

Walker Sands Digital is adept at defining useful personas for large B2B and technology organizations and startups alike. There are several common questions our clients ask when determining the best approach to defining personas for their potential customers.

Why Should I Define Persona for My Buyer?

A persona is an example of a person in your target audience who buys your product. These personas feature generalized personalities of key buyer groups based on demographics and market insights. They help you better understand your target audience and tailor your marketing strategies more effectively.

By including an in-depth analysis of buyer behaviors, decision-making processes, interests and passions, you can understand how, why, where and when your buyers make a decision and how you can influence them to purchase your product over a competitor’s or alternative solution.

Buyer personas are important tools that help elevate marketing, PR and content creation strategies to increase campaign effectiveness and return on investment.

How Do I Define Persona for Buyers?

At Walker Sands Digital, we take a calculated approach when we define persona profiles for companies. When creating great buyer personas, it’s important to include several pieces of critical information that can help you better understand your customers and target specific buyer segments.

The first steps in determining your buyer persona include:

• Determine How Many Personas You Need: Most companies will need to create more than one buyer persona. Many organizations think their customer base fits into a single bucket, but that is rarely the case. Customer bases are inherently diverse and it is wise to create multiple segments of buyers depending on their unique demographics, purchasing goals and experiences.
• Consider Market Conditions and Industry Research: It’s important to include industry and market research when creating buyer personas. Data and statistics can serve as valuable resources when learning more about customer behaviors, spending habits and motivations.
• Compile Key Demographic Information: At a minimum, be sure to include basic demographic information in your buyer persona. This includes age, gender, socio-economic status, buying habits, as well as marital and family status. These simple demographic indicators can help you learn about your diverse buyer groups.
• Define Underlying Buyer Motivations and Objectives: After you define the basic demographic information, compile other features that are specific to your brand, industry and clients. This information will be key into shaping the final product of your buyer persona efforts.

Buyer personas are extremely valuable tools in ensuring your marketing efforts are producing meaningful results and ROI. They play a key role in developing strong marketing messaging and identifying the most effect channels to disseminate your message. It’s important to manage buyer personas over the long term. This means you should frequently reassess your key audiences, their goals and motivations to make sure your strategies are up to date.