What is a Buyer Persona and How to Create One?

Buyer personas can help you a lot in your marketing efforts, but it’s vital to know what to include in your research. If you want to learn how to create buyer persona you are in the right place!

Yes, it takes time to develop multiple personas that would reflect your customers’ preferences. But trust me – it’s definitely worth it. In fact, well-researched buyer personas will save you a lot of time and hassle in your future marketing efforts.

Today I will teach you everything you need to know about creating a sample target customer and how to interpret their purchasing decisions to your benefit. We will start with theory and finish with a step-by-step guide on how to create a buyer persona.

Skip to the bottom of the article to learn how you can use Brand24 to make a buyer persona.

Table of contents:

1. What is a buyer persona – definition
2. What are the benefits of creating buyer personas?
3. How can buyer personas be used in marketing?
4. Different types of buyer personas
5. How many buyer personas should you have?
6. How to create a buyer persona in 5 easy steps
7. How to use Brand24 for buyer personas research?

What is a buyer persona – definition

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and data about your target market. It is a detailed description of a specific type of client that includes information such as demographics, behavior patterns, goals, challenges, preferences, and motivations.

Some common information that might be included in a buyer persona includes age, gender, education level, job title, income, hobbies, interests, family status, preferred communication channels, and buying habits. The more detailed and accurate the buyer persona is, the better your organization can understand the ideal customer and make data-driven decisions about how to market and sell to them.

What are the benefits of creating buyer personas?

Buyer personas are important because they help businesses to better understand their target audience and therefore develop a more accurate marketing strategy.

With a well-researched buyer persona, you will be able to figure out your potential customers. Namely, what they need, what are the pain points, and how they would like the product or service to work.

Knowing your customer personas, you can now tailor your marketing messages more accurately to reach this type of people. After all, the buyer persona should be an individual that is most likely to make a purchase.

Another great benefit of creating a buyer persona is that when you know your audience, you can easily increase customer loyalty. You can do so by addressing the needs of your existing customers. This way, you will show them that your organization understands and cares about its clients. You can build stronger relationships with your customers and even encourage them to become brand advocates, all while following the buyer persona templates.

Finally, when you plan the product development, you can use buyer personas to determine which way to go, so your customers will be satisfied and stay in your sales cycle.

To sum up, there are 4 main reasons why you should create a buyer persona:

1. Understanding your target audience,
2. Developing effective marketing strategies,
3. Increasing customer loyalty,
4. Informing about product development.

How can buyer personas be used in marketing?

Now that you understand why buyer personas are important let’s focus on how to use them to attract ideal customers. There are at least 5 great ways of including buyer persona examples in your marketing campaigns.

01 Tailored messaging

The buyer persona profile should include the main characteristics of the target customers. That means, if you do your research phase right, you will be able to speak their language. You will understand all problems they face and how exactly your product or service can help.

For example, if your buyer persona is a working mom, you can focus on all the time-saving features of your product in the marketing strategy. Or, if you target small businesses with your SaaS, think of marketing automation features that will allow focusing their efforts elsewhere.

02 Developing marketing content

When you know your customers, your marketing and sales teams can work on the content that will most likely resonate with the focus group.

Each buyer persona will be attracted to different content. For example, younger generations tend to love the short video format, and since they browse the Internet with mobile phones, your content should be optimized for social media. On the other hand, older generations still prefer longer, in-depth videos and are more likely to watch them on a desktop. Of course, this is just a general statement, and you should always research your customer personas thoroughly because they might have less standardized behaviors.

Learn more about content marketing >>

03 Choosing the right marketing channel

Your buyer persona spreadsheet should also include information what’s the preferred communication channel. Research if they prefer social media (and if yes, then which ones) or traditional media. Do they listen to the radio? Do they communicate solely via email?

For example, if you want to attract young business owners, C-level management, and such, you might want to consider advertising on Linkedin.

04 Offers and promotions

Again, since you know who your ideal customer is, you can create special offers and sales aimed directly at that specific person. That’s why the buyer persona matrix should also include shopping habits and motivations.

Example? If your buyer persona is price-sensitive, you might offer a discount or bundle deal to incentivize them to buy.

05 Conducting market research

Buyer personas can also be used to conduct market research and better understand your target audience. By gathering data on your ideal customer’s behavior, preferences, and motivations, you can make informed decisions about how to market and sell to them.

Here are some competitor analysis tools you might want to try.

Different types of buyer personas

There’s not one default buyer persona template. Depending on your needs, you can create different personas to fully understand how your messaging should look like.

Below are 5 examples of buyer personas you can use.

01 Demographic personas

These personas are based on demographic factors such as age, gender, income, education, and location. If you are selling products or services that are particularly relevant to a specific demographic group, you might want to research this type of buyer persona.

Example: Smartphone manufacturers can research demographic information to decide how to market specific models to their target audience.

02 Psychographic personas

These personas are based on personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. This type of persona can be useful for brands that sell products that are strongly associated with a particular lifestyle or belief system.

Example: Gaming products and brands are targeted at a specific niche that expects particular performance and design.

03 Behavioral personas

A behavioral buyer persona is based on the buying behavior and decision-making processes, such as how customers research products, what factors influence their purchasing decisions, and what type of customer service they expect. Use this template if you want to optimize the sales processes and customer service.

Example: Any products for specialists should have behavioral personas in mind as they usually put more effort into product research.

04 Industry personas

The industry persona template is mainly used by B2B businesses operating within a specific industry. These personas are based on the specific needs, pain points, and challenges of the customers from the particular industry sector.

Example: Industrial companies that sell machines such as CNC routers or 3D printers. They need to adapt the products to specific clients’ needs.

05 Service personas

Similarly to industry personas, service personas also use specific needs, pain points, and challenges, but they refer to the company’s services. Service providers (for example, SaaS companies) use this type of persona, and it can help them improve their workflow and customer journey.

Example: SaaS marketing tools need to adjust their products accordingly to the workflow of the service personas.

How many buyer personas should you have?

It’s always good to have multiple buyer personas, but at the same time, remember that less is more. If you create too many personas, you can get lost in the plethora of examples.

Try starting with 2-4 different personas that will depict ideal customers with distinctive backgrounds.

There’s no ideal number of how many buyer personas you should have. It depends on whether you make a very specific product with narrow capabilities or if you offer a broad spectrum of services.

What’s more important is the quality of each buyer persona. The less you have, the easier it is to research them. Rather than focusing on creating as many personas as possible, you should aim to create accurate, detailed, and actionable personas. This means conducting thorough research and using real data to inform the development of each persona and regularly updating and refining them over time to ensure they remain relevant and effective.

How to create a buyer persona in 5 easy steps

The audience research phase can take some time, but at the end of the day, it’s a productive process that will give you a lot of valuable insights about your customers. Here are 5 steps to creating a strong buyer persona for your brand.

01 Conduct research

The first step in creating a buyer persona is to conduct research to gather information about your target audience. This involves analyzing data on your existing customers, conducting surveys or interviews, and researching online forums and social media groups related to your industry or product.

There are many tools that can help you with conducting the research and Brand24 is one of them. I’ll tell you how to use it in the next chapter.

02 Identify key characteristics of ideal buyer

Once you have gathered the data, you can use it to identify the key characteristics of your ideal customer. Look for specific demographic information, such as age and gender, and psychographic information, such as values, attitudes, and interests.

03 Develop a profile

Using the information you have gathered, develop a detailed buyer persona profile that includes their background, job title, challenges, goals, and preferred communication channels. This will help you to better understand their needs and motivations and get acquainted with potential customers.

04 Name your persona

It’s important that your buyer persona has a name. It humanizes the profile and makes it easier to refer to. You can add a prefix descriptor so it’s easier to remember. For example, “Analytic Ian” for a person looking for social media analytic tools for his organization.

05 Use your buyer persona in the marketing strategy

Now there’s nothing left but to implement the target personas in your business strategy. What it means is that now in your marketing personas will determine the messaging and tone of voice. They will help you better resonate with your ideal customer, create content that is more likely to engage and resonate with them, and choose the right communication channels.

How to use Brand24 for buyer personas research?

Brand24 is a media monitoring and social listening tool. After you set up the project, our tool will gather all publicly available online mentions about your brand, selected keywords, or competitors. This means you can gather real customer data and discover your prospective customers’ language.

You can use Brand24 to monitor your brand mentions and use the data to analyze what people are interested in your services or products. Use the data to evaluate your marketing communication and sales team efforts. Do you use the right language? Do you communicate via the right channels? Does the product resonate positively with the audience?

You can even use the tool to find the most influential people on social media and schedule a call with them to gather real customer feedback.

Related guide: What is influencer marketing?

On the other hand, you can also search for product-related keyword mentions and discover how people communicate within the niche and what do they look for. Then, use the analytics data to create ads that will directly address the problems and offer solutions.

Brand24 is an awesome tool for researching current customers’ moods and what they really think about your brand (sentiment analysis). Once you collect the feedback, it will be easy for you to base the buyer personas on real customers.

Give it a go! The first 14 days are on us, and we don’t want your credit card details.