By Marq Untivero
Creating buyer personas is an essential marketing technique you should work on when developing a strategy for your small business. Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers–your target audience.
The most effective buyer personas are not vague descriptions of the types of customers you are trying to attract, but are based on market research and relevant information that you gather from your actual customers through surveys, feedback forms, and more. Small businesses can start with as few as one or two personas, but you can always develop more as your business grows. Learning how to create and use buyer personas will provide your small business with endless benefits.
Here are the ways buyer personas can help your small business.
Define and Understand Your Target Customer
A well-researched buyer persona lets you understand your existing and prospective customers. You can visualize their needs and wants, motivations and habits, pain points and shopping preferences. These insights let your business connect with your customers better by helping you create targeted content and services that your customers are looking for.
Focus Your Marketing Efforts
Many small businesses make the mistake of trying to attract everyone. Good buyer personas determine which customers are worth your time and money. You can fine-tune your marketing campaign to target prospective customers who are more likely to buy instead of wasting your resources on those who aren’t.
Create Personalized and Segmented Marketing
When you have identified your target market segments and customer personas, you can provide customized, relevant, and useful information to your customers that lead to better sales results. By communicating in the language of your customers, you also build trust and help drive customer loyalty.
Determine the Best Way to Reach Your Target Customers
Once you have identified the background of your potential customers, you gain insights on where and how they spend their time online, where they conduct online research before buying, which social networking sites they use to connect with family and friends. This information will let you better target your marketing efforts by promoting your content in places where your prospective customers are more likely to see it. Your prospects are also more likely to respond positively to content that matches their interests and is found in channels that they frequent.
Ensure Consistency in Your Marketing Strategy
Make everyone in your team know and understand your buyer personas. This ensures that all your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts are aligned with your customer’s needs. Small businesses like yours will greatly benefit from a unified marketing strategy that caters to the needs of your potential customers.
Find Better Quality Leads
By determining your prospective customer’s interests, motivations, habits, and preferences, you gain the opportunity to find better quality leads that are sales-ready because you are reaching them by providing what they want in the channels that they prefer. For example, the insights that you learn about your customers will let you create a more personalized email marketing campaign with better results.
Improve and Save Money on Product Development
Well-defined buyer personas backed by research help create products and services that appeal to your prospective customers. You can improve sales results and save money by developing products and services that cater to the needs of your target customers instead of trying to attract a much broader audience.
Provide a Personalized Experience to Your Buyers
For small businesses that don’t have the resources or manpower that bigger businesses have, you can make up for it by providing a positive personalized customer experience. If you have identified buyer profiles that you think will find value in your product or service, you can create customized messaging for them. By understanding your target audience, you can tweak your marketing strategy to meet your customers’ expectations better.
Buyer personas are really all about getting to know your ideal customers better and listening to what they need and want. Taking the time to research your target market and creating a buyer persona will help accelerate your marketing efforts. As a small business owner, you should make sure all your efforts are worth your time and resources. Developing buyer personas is one of the marketing techniques that will pay off many times over as your business grows.
