In business, it is imperative to know the answers to this question. This information is equally as important in the business of Inbound Marketing. From sales to marketing and everything in between, knowing the person you are selling to plays a major role. This will help keep everyone constant across the board, keeping everyone in the same mindset of your target market.

Who is your business selling to anyways?

Creating buyer personas will help tremendously with this process, and give your business a base to build thoughts, ideas, etc. off of. This will assist in presenting your message to the different customers of why your product/service would serve as a good fit for them.

As defined at Leadlizard.com, a buyer persona is The persona(s) of key buyers of your company’s products & services. A buyer persona includes demographic, firmographic, psychological and behavioral components of a buyer. (http://www.leadlizard.com/lead-management-glossary/)

Creating buyer personas will prove to be a worthwhile task, and bring forth great information to share amongst all employees. The personas will act as a guide in each sector of the business, keeping every piece heading in the same directions.

Research is Key to marketing success

Before you begin to create these personas, research will have to be done to collect information that will be used to construct these characters. Collecting as much information at this point will prove to be beneficial, even if you think the info may not be helpful. The more material you have to create your persona, the more your entire business will understand the roles you are targeting.

Research can/should be compiled of data from past customers, facts about potential customers, interviews with people included in your target audience, anything believed to be supportive in building these personas. The research should support the creation of multiple personas, as your business most likely serves multiple types of customers.

Now, onto constructing these buyers!

Let the fun begin! Questions are the key component of this phase. So ask away, and answer accordingly because the more information you have on each persona, the better. A few fields you will want to obtain questions and answers from include:

• Age
• Marital Status
• Income
• Hobbies
• Family Life
• Job
• Job Environment
• Geographic
• Online Habits
• Social Media Use

Again, those are just to name a few. You will want to gather much more information on each persona to assist in completely structuring them out.

A Real Buyer Persona Example

The following example is a portion of information from a real buyer persona created by one of our clients:

• Type- Not So Newlyweds
• Names- Jan $ Jon
• Age- 36-46
• Income- $145,000
• Gender- Female and Male
• Family Information- Married for 12 years- 2 kids at home 10-year-old boy & 7-year-old girl, 2 dogs
• Role in Buying Process- Jan leads, John gives input
• Hobbies- attending kids sports events and performances, outings to the lake, gardening, bowling
• Frustrations- Finding time to spend together without the kids

The process of building out buyer personas can be time-consuming but will prove to be beneficial once accomplished. The goal of these is to help keep a constant message in mind across the business of whom you are targeting.

The creation of the personas will help your business support the message to the consumer of why they should buy or use your product/service.

Have fun, and create away!

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