How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Character Template]

Marketing Margie. Sales Sam. IT Isabel. Alan Accounting.

Do you know who the buyers of your business are? And if so, what do you know about them?

Buyer characters are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on dataes and research. They help you focus your time on qualified leads, guide product development based on the needs of your target customers, and align all work within your organization (from marketing to sales to service).

As a result, you 'll be able to attract high-value visitors, prospects and customers to your business that you are more likely to retain over time.

Specifically, having a thorough understanding of your buyer persona (s) is essential for driving content creation, product development, sales tracking and really everything that has to do with the buyer. 'acquisition and retention of customers.

"Okay, so personas are really important to my business. But ... how do I create one? "

Ahh... the million dollar question. The good news is, they're not that hard to create. It all depends on how you get your h market research and customer data and then present that information within your business.

Follow this guide and download these persona models to simplify this process . Before you know it, you'll have complete, well-planned buyer personas to show your entire business!

1. Why are the personalities of are buyers that important?

2. Different types of buyer personas

3. Comment create buyer personas

4. How to find interviewees to search for personas

5. Tips for recruiting interviews

6. 20 questions ask for personal interviews

Before we dive into the process of creating a buyer persona, let's take a break to understand the impact of well-developed buyer personas on your business (more specifically, your marketing efforts).

Why exactly are buyer personas so important to your business?

Buyer personalities help you better understand your customers (and prospects). This makes it easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, product development, and services to meet needs, includingspecific concerns and concerns of members of your target audience.

Use Personality Templates to easily organize your audience segments and build your marketing stronger

For example, you might know that your target buyers are caregivers, but do you know what their specific needs and interests are? What is the typical journey of your ideal buyer? In order to fully understand what motivates your best customers, it is essential to develop detailed personalities for your business.

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as insights that you collect from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.).

Depending on your business, you might have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. But if you're new to personas, start small - you can alwaysbears develop more personas later if necessary.

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What about "negative" buyer personas?

While a buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, a negative - or "exclusionary" - customer persona is a representation of who you don 't as. that customer.

For example, this may include professionals who are too advanced for you with our product or service, students who only interact with your content for research / knowledge, or buddy customersntiels that are simply too expensive to acquire (due to a low average sale price, their propensity to unsubscribe, or their reluctance to buy again from you.

'Can buyers be used in marketing?

At the most basic level, persona development allows you to create content and messages that appeal to your target audience. It also allows you to target or personalize your marketing to different segments of your audience.

For example, instead of sending the same lead promotion emails to everyone in your database, you can segment by buyer persona and tailor your message to what you know about these different personas.

Additionally, when combined with the lifecycle stage (that is, how far into your sales cycle is someone), buyer personas also allow youto plot and create highly targeted content. (To learn more about how to do this, downloading our content mapping template .)

And if you take the time to create negative personas as well, you will get it. The added benefit of being able to segment the "bad apples " from the rest of your contacts, which can help you lower cost per-lead and cost per customer - and, as a result, see higher sales productivity.

Different types of buyer personas

As you start working on your personas, you may ask yourself, "What are the different types of buyer personas? " From there, it would be easy to adjust one for your business - isn 't it?

Well, that 's not exactly how it works - there is no fixed list of universally recognized buyers of personalities among thewhich to choose, and there is also no standard for the number of people you need. This is because every business (no matter how many competitors they have) is unique - and for this reason, their buyer personalities should be unique to them as well.

For these reasons, identifying and creating your different buyer personas can sometimes be a bit difficult. This is why we recommend that you use the 's Make My Persona generator (as well as Personality Templates ) to simplify the process of creating different characters.

In general, companies can have the same or similar categories for their buyer personas (eg, marketing manager, human resources representative, IT manager, etc.). But the different personalities of your company and the number of them that your eOur business needs will be tailored to who your target audience includes and what you offer to your customers.

Now, are you ready to start building your buyer personas?

How to create Buyer personas

Buyer personas can be created through research, surveys, and interviews - all with a mix of customers, prospects, and people external to your database of contacts who might align with your target audience.

Here are some handy ways to gather the information you need to develop personas:

• Look at your database of contacts to discover trends in how certain prospects or customers find and consume your content.

• Use the form fields that capture personal informationthe important ones when creating the form s for use on your website . For example, if all of your personalities vary by company size, ask each prospect for company size information on your forms.

• Consider your sales team's feedback on the leads they interact with the most. What generalizations can they make about the different types of clients you serve best?

• Interview customers and prospects to find out what they like about your product or service.

Now how can you use the above research to create your personas?

Once you go through the research process, you will have a lot of raw and meaty data on your potential and current customers. But what do you do with it? How to distill all of this so that it is easy for everyone to understandWhat is the information you gathered?

The next step is to use your research to identify patterns and commonalities of the answers to your interview questions, develop at least one main character and share it with the rest of the world. business.

Use our free downloadable character model to organize the information you have collected about your character (s). Then share these slides with the rest of your business so that everyone can benefit from the research you've done and develop a deep understanding of the person (s) they target each day at work.

Here's how to go through the steps to create your buyer personas in more detail.

1. Fill in the basic demographic information of your character.

Ask demographic questions over the phone, in person, or throughonline surveys. (Some people are more comfortable divulging personal information like this.)

It is also helpful to include buzzwords and mannerisms about your character that you may have picked up in your conversations to make it easier for your team members to identify certain characters when speaking to prospects.

Here is an example of how you might fill out section 1 of your template for one of your characters:

2. Share what you have learned about your character's motivations.

This is where you will distill the information you have learned by asking yourself "why" during these interviews. What is preventing your character from staying awake at night? Who does he want to be? Most importantly, connectall of this by telling people how you business can help them.

3. Help your sales team prepare for conversations with your character.

Include real quotes from your interviews that illustrate what's on your mind your characters, who they are and what they want. Next, create a list of any objections they might raise so your sales team is ready to respond to them during their conversations with prospects.

4. Create messages for your character.

Tell people how to talk about your products / services with your persona. This includes basic vocabulary you should use, as well as a more general pitch that position your flooruse in a way that resonates with your persona.

This will help you make sure that everyone in our company speaks the same language when having conversations with prospects and customers.

Finally, be sure to give your character a name (for example, finance manager Margie, IT Ian or landscaper Larry) so that everyone refers to each character in the same way, allowing consistency between the teams.

How to find interviewees to research buyer personalities

One of the most critical steps in establishing your buyer personas is finding people to talk to to determine who your buyer persona is.

This means that youYou will need to conduct interviews to find out what motivates your target audience. But how do you find these interviewees? You need to tap into a few sources:

1. Use your current customers.

Your existing customers are the perfect starting point for your talks, because they have already purchased your product and interacted with your business. At least some of them are likely to illustrate your target character (s).

Don't just talk to people who love your product and want to spend an hour gushing at you (as good as you see fit). Customers who are not happy with your product will view other models that will help you gain a solid understanding of your personalities.

For example, you might find that some of your less satisfied customers have larger teams and need better collaboration functionality from your business.oduit. Or, you may find that they find your product too technical and difficult to use. In bot h case, you learn something about your product and the challenges of your customers.

Another advantage of interviewing current customers is that you may not need to offer them an incentive (eg, a gift card) to do so. . Customers often love to be heard - interviewing them gives them a chance to tell you about their world, their challenges, and what they think about your product.

Customers also like to have an impact on the products they use. So, when you involve them in interviews like this, you might find that they become even more loyal to your business. When contacting customers, make it clear that your goal is to get their feedback and that their feedback is highly valued by your team.

2. Use your leads.

Be sure to interview people who haven't bought your product and who don't know much about your brand. Your current leads and prospects are a great option here because you already have their contact information.

Use the data you have about them (i.e. anything you've collected through lead generation forms or website analytics) to determine who might match to your target personalities.

3. Use your referrals.

You will probably also have to rely on some downline to talk to people who might match your target personalities, especially if you are heading into new markets or not. you still have prospects or customers.

Use your network - like your colleagues, existing clients, social media contacts - to find people you would like to interview andbe presented. It can be difficult to recruit a large number of people this way, but you will likely end up with very high quality interviews.

If you're not sure where to start, try searching LinkedIn for people who might match your target personalities and see which results have things in common with you. Then contact your mutual contacts for presentations.

4. Use third party networks.

For inter visitors who are completely removed from your business, there are a few third party networks you can recruit from. Craigslist allows you to post ads to people interested in any type of job and UserTesting.com allows you to run user tests remotely (with a few complementary questions).

You will have less control over sessions run through UserTesting.com, but it is a great resource.e to quickly test user recruitment.

Now that we know how to identify interviewees, let's take a look at some tips for recruiting them.

Tips for recruiting interviewees

When reaching out to potential interviewees, here are some ideas to improve your response rates.

1. Use incentives.

While you don't need it in all scenarios (for example, customers who already want to talk to you), incentives give people a reason to attend an interview if they have no relationship with you. A simple gift card is an easy option.

2. Be clear that this is not a business call.

This is especially important when dealing with non-clients. Make it clear that you are doing the research and just want to learn from it. Vodo not encourage them to engage in an hour-long sales call; you get them to commit to telling you about their life, their work and their challenges.

3. Make it easy to say yes.

Take care of everything for your potential interviewer - suggest times but be flexible, allow them to pick a time up front and send out a calendar invitation with a reminder to block out of their time.

4. Decide on the number of people to interview.

Unfortunately the answer is that it depends. Start with at least three to five interviews for each character you create. If you already know a lot about your character, this may be enough. You may need to do several interviews in each category of interviewee (customers, prospects, people who don't know your business).

The rule of thumb is that when you start to accurately predict what yourbeing interviewed is going to say, it's probably time to quit. Through these interviews, you will naturally start to notice trends.

Once you start to expect and predict what your interviewer is going to say, it means you've interviewed enough people to find and internalize these patterns. .

5. Determine the questions you will ask the interviewees.

It's time for the interview! After the normal little talk and the thanks, it's time to move on to your questions. There are several categories of questions you will want to ask in persona interviews to create a complete persona profile.

20 questions to ask in personal interviews

The following questions are organized into eight categories, but feel free to customize this list and remove or add othersquestions that may be suitable for your target customers.

1. Questions about the role

• What is your professional role? Your title?
• How is your work measured?
• What does a typical day look like?
• What skills are required to do your job?
• What knowledge and what tools do you use in your work?
• Who do you relate to? Who reports to you?

2. Questions about the company

• In which sector (s) does your company work?

• What is the size of your business (income, employees)?

3. Questions about the objectives

• What are you responsible for?
• What does it mean to be successful in your role?

4. Challenge question

• What are your biggest challenges?

5. Wate Ring Hole Questions

• How do you learn about new information about your job?
• What publications or blogs do you read?
• What associations and social networks do you participate in?

6. Personal History Questions

• Describe your personal demographics (if possible, ask their age, if they are married and 'they have children).
• Describe your training. . What level of education did you complete, what schools did you attend and what did you study?
• Describe your career path. How did you get to where you are today?

7. Questions about purchasing preferences

• How do you prefer to interact with suppliers (for example, e-mail, telephone, no one)?
• Do you use the Internet to research suppliers or products? If so, how to searchhome information?
• Describe a recent purchase. Why did you consider a purchase, what was the review process and how did you decide to purchase this product or service?

8. The "Why? " question

Here is the number one tip for a successful personal interview.

The follow-up question to almost all of the questions in the list above should be "why? " Through these interviews, you try to understand the goals, behaviors and motivations of your clients (or potential customers). But keep in mind that people aren't always good at reflecting on their behaviors to tell you what makes them tick at heart.

You don't care if they are measuring the number of visits to their website, for example. What is important to you is that they measure these visits as a way to show their superiors that they are doing a good job.

Start with a simple questionthe - for example, "the biggest challenge? " Then have a good time digging into this question to find out more about that person. You learn more by asking yourself "why?" Only more superficial questions.

Create your buyer personas

Create your buyer personas to better understand your target customers and ensure that everyone on your team knows how to target, support and work best with your customers. This will help you improve reach, increase conversions, and increase loyalty.

And if you are a customer, add your character to your Marketing Platform in by following this step by step setup guide .

Editor's note: This article was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for completeness.