Buyer Persona Meaning
A buyer persona is a detailed description of the average person(s) that represent your target audience. It is based on extensive research of your desired or existing audience. The buyer persona will describe interests, behavioral traits and demographic information. It is also called the customer persona, marketing persona or audience persona.
Chances are that different types of customers will buy one product for different reasons. In that case, the business will create different buyer personas to represent the different types of customers within its customer base.
Businesses craft their marketing messages around these personas as though they were an actual person. This helps keep the message, voice and marketing direction focused and consistent starting from product development all the way to the social media channels used.
To create a buyer persona:
- Define and analyze your existing customers. Obtain details of their age, location, interests, language, challenges, spending patterns, spending power and social status.
- Identify customer needs such as goals, motivation, pain points and barriers.
- Think about how you can address these needs through your product’s features and benefits.
- Look for common characteristics among your audience. Use these as a basis to create one or buyer personas.
- Give each persona a name, title and other characteristic description. As a guideline, provide each persona with about the same profile information you would expect to see on a dating site. This includes age, likes, hobbies, home area, profession/career, type of car and club membership.
Some businesses define a negative or exclusionary buyer persona to represent the type of person the business would not want for a customer. The reasons for their exclusion could be anything from age to product pricing.
