Imaginary friends were a phenomenon for many as kids. In the realm of branding and marketing similarly, every marketer has an imaginary friend who helps them to strategize their agenda accordingly. This is called a ‘Buyer Persona’ – a fictional character systemically built-up to understand the needs of a potential consumer demographic and to design an ideal product based on that need. Modern ventures can also increase the efficiency of their marketing campaigns by analyzing the buyer personas and by figuring out the most potent way to reach them. A business can have one or multiple buyer personas depending on their capacity, but the process behind constructing a buyer persona is almost the same for every business regardless of how big or small it may be. Let us delve into the discussion of how five simple steps can guide you towards creating a successful buyer persona for your venture.

Step One: Research

The work begins with examining the information you already have in hand. An easy yet effective way to do this is by looking into the details of your existing customers. Information can be gathered by speaking with the customer-facing employees, clients themselves or by checking out your own analytics. The goal of the research is to identify a pattern of similarities between the individuals who are your returning customers. These similarities can be found in their profession, pastime activities or even gender and age. Market research is also another way of getting your hands on the strongholds of your competitors and finding out what they did and how they did it. Through cohesive research, a company can also determine in which segment it wants to flourish. A thorough and successful research is the key to creating the perfect buyer persona.

Step Two: Segmentation

After the completion of research and collection of data, it is time to categorically organize all the information you have gathered to give them meaningful interpretation. Naturally there will be different groups within your customer base who have different interests and needs which have led them to your products or services. This is the crucial point for a company to decide upon how many buyer personas it would wish to cater to. For instance, a company that sells a variety of products and thus corresponds to different industries has to identify the potential consumers under each industry and devise segmented buyer personas accordingly.

Step Three: Innovation and Creation

Now this is the step where brand practitioners need to stretch their creative muscles to come up with a name and a story for their buyer persona. You will undoubtedly have the backing of segmented data which was developed through your research. However, for a successful output you need to have a personal touch here. The objective here is to create a personal story for the persona which would be highly relatable to the targeted audience you are trying to reach. An efficient marketer can dive into the sea of his imagination to come up with a full profile for a buyer persona that almost feels real, as if the imaginary figure indeed exists somewhere.

Step Four: Problem Solving

It is business 101 that every product or service will only carry a value as long as it can solve a certain problem or suffice a need. But it is not possible for a venture to get a close view on every potential consumer’s need; which is why they tend to focus on the profile they draft as a buyer persona. Go through the roles your persona has to perform daily in his professional or personal life and try to seek what are their short and long-term goals. Then, you have to identify the challenges they face in achieving those goals and how your good or service helps to mitigate that particular challenge. When you are convinced that your product solves your buyer persona’s problem efficiently, rest assured that it will do the same for your targeted pool as well.

Step Five: Implement

After everything is drafted on the papers, it is time to apply it in the real world. Brands tailor their stories and marketing gimmicks in accordance with their buyer personas for the most efficient outcome. Keeping a sales track after following a certain buyer persona is essential so that if a brand does not achieve the expected results in sales, it can reshape and fine-tune the profile for better results. A buyer persona is certainly not stagnant and so constantly updating it to stay in the fierce competition of this day and age is necessary.

With the help of buyer personas, you can gain deeper knowledge of how your most qualified prospects operate. This also provides you with the information about what actually drives your customers to buy from you. The key to a successful buyer persona mainly lies in your research and your creativity. It is unquestionably, an essential tool for brand practitioners to understand the need of the market and grow their businesses accordingly.

Author-  Sadman Bin Ahsan