Why is a Buyer-Personas important? Buyer personas help you understand your audience’s behaviour and align your social media marketing strategy to attract target customers. The knowledge about the behaviour and needs of your products users enables you to create helpful content that effectively reaches out to them. With a buyer persona you can target your ideal customers, achieve higher conversion rates, and improve your customer experience.
This article will explain everything you need to know about buyer personas, how to create them, and 3 tips on how to use them for your social media marketing.
Buyer Persona explained
Max, Marketing Manager. Isabel, Influencer. Edward, entrepreneur. All these are examples of personas, fictional characters who act as representatives of a specific audience. These are created using concrete data of your current users. Buyer personas help you understand the user behaviour of your audience more easily. The aim is to gain a detailed overview of a person and his/her life to adjust marketing measures to the specific requirements, behaviour, and interests of the different users.
Marketing according to the needs of your customer
Customer journey mapping helps you to create content based on your customers’ needs to increase customer retention and achieve higher conversions. Read more here https://blog.fanpagekarma.com/2020/07/22/customer-journey-mapping-marketing-according-to-the-needs-of-your-customers/
Buyer Persona Research
Effective buyer personas are based on thorough research on your users’ behaviour, needs and challenges. Consider all persons who could be considered as a relevant audience. This includes active users, potential customers and people who have not yet been in contact with your company. Use different sources and methods to obtain the necessary information:
1. Identify User Behaviour via Tracking-Tools
Tracking tools enable a detailed documentation of user behaviour. Use tools like Google Analytics to track users’ online behavior. For example, you can see where users come from, which links they click on most, or which device your users use to access your website.
2. Use Knowledge from Service, Sales and Marketing
Ask your employees from service, sales and marketing about relevant customer data. Especially in these areas, you can learn a lot about existing customers and their interactions with your company. You will learn about most common service requests, how potential buyers get informed, and what complaints prevent potential customers from buying your product.
3. Benefit from surveys and interviews
Run interviews and surveys with users and customers to find out what they like about your offer. Find out what pain points are in the buying process and what aspects of your offer convince them. Identify a person’s key data, such as profession, age, marital status and place of residence. In addition, you can ask questions about personal challenges and find out how the person informs him/herself or which difficulties can prevent him/her from buying.
Create your Buyer Persona
After thorough research, you have collected all necessary information to create a meaningful buyer persona. But how can you summarize the collected data into a persona? First, create your buyer persona(s) with the following key data:
- First and surname (fictive)
- Demographic characteristics: age, status, location, income
- Employment: company, profession
- “Pain Points” (frustrations): Which aspects of the customer journey have a negative impact on the persona’s purchase decision?
- Values: What is important to the persona? Does he/she stand for innovation or tradition? Quality or quantity?
- Goals: What are the personal and professional goals of the persona?
- Sources of Information: How does the persona get information? Which sources does the persona use to research?
- Objections: What objections, fears or other obstacles can prevent the persona from purchasing?
It can be helpful to add pictures and give your buyer persona a face. An example of a persona could look like this:
Use our representation to create a clear picture of your buyer personas. Add further relevant information for your company and complete your persona.
Buyer Personas in Marketing
Once you created your buyer personas, it is important to work out how to use them efficiently for your marketing. We have compiled 3 tips for you to optimize your approach. You will also find examples of customer-specific content and social media advertising from different companies.
1. Create Content and Campaigns for Specific Personas
Your buyer personas point out what your users like, their reactions and how you can convince them of your offer. Use this knowledge to create target-oriented content that arouses the interest of your persona. This also allows you to create campaigns for specific target groups. You now know which users have already clicked on a certain advertisement and can create a retargeting campaign according to the needs of these users.
For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland used social media campaigns to draw young students’ attention to their offer. The company uses the juxtaposition of expectation and reality to address the students’ problems, providing helpful content according to the needs of potential customers.
2. Align Existing Content with Personas
Review your existing content and adjust it to your buyer personas. Content that is not relevant to your target group can be adjusted or removed. Estimate the effort involved and think carefully whether it is worthwhile to adapt. If certain content was not successful before, e.g. few clicks or little engagement, the effort is not worthwhile. This way you can increase awareness of your offer and achieve a higher level of engagement.
3. Match Corporate Communications to Personas
Do you speak the language of your personas? Based on the research you got a feeling how personas communicate on each platform. Adapt the tone and voice of your community to improve communication and community management. Use this knowledge to create your content and adapt call-to-actions or feed texts to the language of your users to get your message across clearly.
The skin care brand Nivea is drawing attention to its products with a campaign focusing on tolerance and talking about a current topic that users are interested in. Their ad text speaks a clear language and puts the company in a good position towards their audience.
Conclusion
Buyer personas create a clear picture of your users and customers, which allows you to easily adapt your marketing strategy to their needs and behaviour. As a result, creating persona-oriented content and activities becomes easier and more efficient. A clear focus on your buyer personas will optimize your social media presence, increasing your conversions and improving your engagement. Get to know your users, find out what they like and which activities will convince them to accept your offer.
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