Brands often use segmentation to help understand and target an audience. This means taking into consideration general details about the average customer, such as their demographic, gender, socio-economic status and so on.
What is less common is the practice of creating customer personas.
However, personas can be one of the most effective ways of bringing this customer segmentation to life.
Defining Customer Personas is an effective optimization for your SEO, PPC like SEM and Social Media Ads, and Content Marketing which surely if you’re a marketer you know how all of these can contribute positively to businesses.
So, what exactly are customer personas, and why are they so important?
Customer Personas
Let’s start with the difference between customer segments and personas.
First, segmentation allows a brand to understand different sets or groups of customers. This might tell us where a particular group lives, their age range, and maybe even some of their typical buying behaviour. A customer persona, on the other hand, allows brands to better understand these homogenous groups, and to recognise key traits within them.
In order to create a representative sample of an audience, personas are based on the analysis and research of real customers. This helps to build a much more detailed picture of the (hypothetical) customer, including far more emotive information such as personal motivations, what they value in a brand, what kind of communication they prefer, etc.
Brands are then able to take this insight and use it to deliver a much more relevant and less one-dimensional experience.
Why is it so important?
Customer personas can provide tremendous value and insight to your organization. For example, they can help everyone on your team:
Develop a deeper understanding of customer needs and how to solve for them
Guide product development by creating features that help them achieve their desired outcomes
Prioritize which projects, campaigns, and initiatives to invest time and resources in
Create alignment across the organization and rally other teams around a customer-centric vision
And as a result, you’ll be better equipped to serve your customers and deliver a superior experience that keeps them coming back for more. But if you don’t nail down your customer personas, every aspect of your product development process, user experience, and marketing campaigns, will suffer. A lot has been written about how to create a customer persona. But wading through all the noise to find the best resources takes a long time. Here are the five best resources to help you create effective customer personas.
Buyer Persona Examples to Help You Create Your Own
1. B2C Buyer Persona Examples
B2C or business-to-customer buyer persona examples. In this case, you are selling directly to a customer – an individual who is using their own money and discretion to make purchasing decisions.
Example 1. In this buyer persona example published on propertyconnect.me, you can get a good idea of who Rachel is by learning about her background, lifestyle, and challenges. In just a few short blurbs, you can understand that she is busy, on a budget, and in need of quick, simple solutions.
Example 2. A buyer persona by Indie Game Girl also uses short blurbs to help you get to know its target customer, Brandi. The details help you visualize the process she goes through when buying shoes. The persona also offers something extra to help you fully understand the frustrations of their target customer; they include quotes from actual customers.
Example 3. Another way to use first-person statements to craft a buyer persona is seen in this example published by Juny Lee on LinkedIn. The persona includes a fictional first-person statement that shares Han-sung’s perspective to bring your character to life.
Example 4. In the next buyer persona example, created by Inalign, you see how a brand can shape its persona to relate to more specific product offerings.
Example 5. Iron Springs Design also does a good job of sharing details about its ideal customer, Sarah, as it relates to its product offerings.
2. B2B Buyer Persona Examples
For our next group of buyer persona examples, we’re going to look at customer descriptions for B2B or business-to-business organizations.
Like B2C examples, the B2B buyer persona examples focus heavily on the individual customer. But the examples include more specific details about where the ideal customer works, what they do, and how they interact with their organization.
Example 6. This ClearVoice persona is an example of a short description that includes all of the essential information for a B2B persona. It explains whom John is while offering necessary details about his job position and ability to make decisions at his organization.
Example 7. One of the buyer persona examples shared on Referral Saasquatch shows how you can include even more information about purchasing decisions. It shows that the persona is the decision-maker and also who influences his purchasing choices.
Example 8. The Marketing Insight example includes a personality and technology scale that rates her character and knowledge. If you have multiple buyer personas, adding a scale to each may be a way to differentiate your unique set of ideal customers.
Example 9. Another option for displaying information is highlighted in this example by Red-Fern Media. Rather than use bullets, blurbs, or scales to offer insight into Deborah, they use an eight-paragraph story.
A full story can help you construct a complete picture of your persona. But this approach will only work for teams that appreciate long-form content. If you have a fast-paced marketing and sales team that responds better to short blurs, you may want to stick with that style.
Example 10. Another one of the company persona examples that uses a lot of content in its description is from the Buyer Persona Institute. The persona includes six tabs of information.
How to create a customer persona
As you can see, there are many ways to create a buyer persona that will work best for your business. Pick the pieces from these buyer persona examples that best match your needs and goals and combine them with essential persona details to create a fully developed profile of your ideal customer.
To help you more into creating your own custom persona here’s a free CUSTOMER PERSONA WORKSHEET you can use.
Also Read, LOYALTY PAYS. CUSTOMER LOYALTY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT REALLY MATTERS
Source:
https://blog.alexa.com/10-buyer-persona-examples-help-create/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/customer-personas-seo-ppc-content-marketing/397592/
