The simplest way to succeed in any business is to know your customers, their needs, and how best to meet them. Connecting and engaging with your customers is easier when you know their interests. While you clearly understand your ideal customer, your marketing manager might have a different idea. Your social media marketing manager might also have a different perception. This is where the idea of creating a customer persona comes in. It helps to ensure you all have a similar image of your ideal customer.
Defining a Customer Persona
A customer persona, also identified as a buyer persona, refers to a well-researched fictional representation of your typical customer. The model of your target customer should feature vital information about the customer, including their demographics, beliefs and attitudes, customer preferences and behaviors, social media channels, pain points, and more.
A well-defined customer persona helps a business develop targeted marketing messages tailored to a specific audience. In this case, connecting with your ideal customer and meeting their particular needs is more effortless. Your customer persona should represent the target market you're trying to reach.
Customer personas help businesses connect with their customers on a deeper level. The reality is that it's easier to meet or surpass your customers' expectations when you know how they will benefit from your product or service.
For marketers, personas are helpful as they help create highly personalized promotional content. This leads to improved engagement levels which ultimately increases the conversion rate.
Your customer persona can help your team to:
• Gain a deeper understanding of the customer tastes and preferences and how to meet their expectations
• Develop products with specific features that trigger customers to take action
• Invest wisely in lucrative projects and campaigns that could generate more leads
• Acquire and retain customers effectively
Generally, customer personas help brands provide real value to their target market, which is why they are in business.
Creating Your Customer Personas
Your customer persona should be based on data-driven research. The following steps can help you create them.
Step 1: Know Your Customers
Before you make assumptions about who your customers might be, you must figure out exactly who they are. If you've been in business for some time, you can quickly identify patterns that define your customers. On the contrary, if you're new to the industry, you may have to use external data to determine your customer base.
An existing business can depend on sales or customer service team information. These are people who interact with your audience more often. They know their challenges and what they expect from your brand. Your sales or customer service team can also tell you why your customers are sometimes reluctant to use your products or services. This valuable information helps you know more about your customers and how to serve them better.
Customer surveys can also help you know your customers more deeply. Asking them questions about your products or services lets you know what you need to improve.
Step 2: Refine Your Data
Once you gather all the information about your customer, refine the data to ensure you have specific details about the customer. For instance, when collecting their personal information, you must know their age, gender, location, marital status, hobbies, and whether they have children.
It would help if you also strived to know your customer's career history, including their level of education, where they work, how much they earn, and their everyday responsibilities.
As for their habits, collect data about where and how they spend their time on social media. Which platforms do they use? How frequently do they use these platforms?
You also need to collect data about their purchasing behavior. What are their preferences? Which challenges do they face when shopping on your platform? What do they like about your brand?
All these details help you zero in on your customer. By knowing them better, you're better placed to meet their needs. In turn, this helps to generate more leads and increase your conversion rate.
Step 3: Create Your Buyer Persona
With all the information you have about your customer, you can now create your persona. Keep in mind that your buyer persona can take different forms depending on the customer details you have. Nonetheless, a detailed persona should include essential details, such as:
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Career status
• Social media activity
• Pain points or challenges
• Purchasing behavior
Who To Involve In Creating Your Customer Persona
Your buyer persona should be mutually agreed upon across all departments in your organization. This helps to ensure your brand speaks with one voice. Therefore, the following departments should be involved in creating your buyer persona.
Sales
You already know the sales department should be included when creating your customer persona. These individuals are in close contact with your customers. They know your customers on a personal level and can provide you with valuable information about your target market.
Marketing
The marketing department should create promotions that resonate with your customers. They should be involved in creating your buyer persona. Having an in-depth knowledge of the customers can help them create personalized messages.
Customer Service
Like the sales team, the customer service team also interacts with your customers from time to time. As a result, they know your customer's pain points. They know what your customers expect from your brand. Working with the customer service team can provide valuable intel about your customers' profiles.
Management
The management team can't be left out as they provide a clear direction on how to create the customer persona in a way that is congruent with the company's goals.
Product Development
The buyer persona should explain what customers expect from your products or services. Therefore, the product development team should help in creating the buyer persona. Working with this team guarantees that customers' needs and expectations are met when designing and developing products.
At Harvard Business School, my professor once stated, "For any business to have great success, it needs to be focused on a quality product, a personal experience and great customer service."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
