If you are reading this, you are not satisfied by the results your business is generating, You might be constantly posting about your business with just the right hashtags and social media efforts, to an audience that is creating a little engagement but generating no sales and losing potential customers. But have you ever wondered why?
The answer is you are putting the right effort in the wrong direction- i.e.: you don’t know who your target audience is and their purchasing behaviors to position your marketing strategies to them.
In this post, we will make you go through a detailed overview of the importance of having an identified customer avatar and a comprehensive free template to assist you in devising your buyer persona.
Defining customer avatar/buyer persona?
For people who are new to marketing- The buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer based on the market research and data of your customers. Buyer persona documents the personal and behavioral traits, demographics, customer life cycles, empathy map, and online habits, enabling you to visualize your right and ideal customer- so you can position your brand and marketing campaigns towards the right audience base, and generate desirable results with the minimum efforts.
Why is creating a buyer persona important?
Devising personas is the starting point of all marketing strategies. As consultants, we have often been faced with challenges to devise a strategy that results in scaling growth while keeping the cost of customer acquisition down. And the first thing that we do is- get the customer personas defined. This step is often missed by many companies, resulting in the loss of potential leads.
Don’t know how you can gather data to compile Buyer Personas for your business?
It can be done through:
- Survey/interview your repeat customers
You may hold surveys with your existing customers to identify what they like and what they don’t like. You may offer some incentives like discounts if you fill out this survey form.
- Brainstorm
You may brainstorm the traits of your dream customers and add them into the buyer persona template.
- Hangout on platforms they are hanging
Hanging out just among your desired audience tells the most about your dream customers, their wants and needs about certain things. You will get to know their pain points as well as what pleases them.
- Get help from tools
Market research tools may help you understand your dream customers and their behaviors better. Such as Think with Google digital marketing toolbox, SurveyMonkey, Ubersuggest, Statista etc. would help to do better analyze who your audience is?
- Buy data from marketing agencies
There are research agencies that have compiled the market data of various niches which may help to identify the traits and behaviors of your dream customers.
Not having customer data to start? Then follow this:
- Identify your potential competitors
- Identify their most engaged and liked the channel
- Hangout in their group to identify the potential customer traits
- Understand their psychology
- Collect data about your prospects
- Devise a buyer persona accordingly
- Collect your customer data
- Revise the persona according to your research
Do you need both a Customer journey map and buyer persona?
Customer journey is different from Buyer persona but a subsection of it.
Customer journey is the stages or processes your customer goes through while deciding to buy your product or service.
Without targeting the right audience at their right stage will likely get you wrong leads, and waste your budget on people who won’t connect with you. While devising a customer journey map, a strategy for each stage would be formulated. Including buyer touchpoints (spots where customers will connect/ interact with your business), the channels they are visiting, and the marketing that would be done. Each marketing campaign made will have different KPIs to measure the success in each stage of the customer journey, creating a customer-focused mentality and henceforth, resulting in increased customer retention, exactly why it’s vital for organizations to devise a map.
Looks like too much to do? Fret not we have devised a template to assist you with all the important information needed to devise a detailed buyer persona- hassle-free.
The section below will cover all the points that our template contains and ideally each buyer persona should contain.
What all to include in the buyer persona?
The buyer persona template is the constitutional document that helps to correctly identify your target audience and direct all your marketing efforts towards your ideal customers. Answering below the question- what a user persona template should include?
- Demographics
Identifying the demographics and generational chart your audience belongs to is important to position your business and marketing strategies towards your dream buyers.
- Personality traits
The foremost priority is of identifying the personal and personality traits of your dream buyer. This section should include personality traits like information sources, workout routine, sleep schedule, extravagance, openness to experience and much more
- Purchase behavior & journey mapping
How they shop and what are their spending habits layouts the positioning plan towards your dream buyer.
- Online habits
How your dream customer spends their time online is crucial aspect to know in order to identify touchpoints of your marketing message.
- Empathy Mapping
Empathy map layouts the complete structure of how your dream customer thinks, does, sees, hears, feels, and says. Empathy mapping also layouts the wishes, pains, and gains of your target customer to help them understand their emotions and influences thoroughly.
Summing it up- A brand that knows what to sell and to whom to sell wins!
We are sharing the most comprehensive Buyer Persona template and build your business hassle-free. DOWNLOAD IT BELOW!
Extra value tip: use the same template to devise a negative buyer persona for people who don’t fit in your target audience to keep your focus aligned. ?
