Buyer personas are important as they help all aspects of a business: marketing, sales, product development. They help you identify and attract the ideal customer for your product or service. Once you know the buyer persona, you can create content and ads and tweak your product to target the right audience. And so, having a clear and deep understanding of your buyer persona can elevate your selling experience. So, how do you create a buyer persona for your online business?
Start by Learning More About Your Customers
How well do you know your audience? This is extremely crucial when trying to create a persona but also when marketing your online business. You won’t be able to present your company/ service as a solution if you do not know your customers’ problems, their backgrounds, goals, and needs. You need to first decide what questions to ask to understand your audience. Does it matter if they have children? Or if they do not have pet insurance? And so on.
Get outbound calling to support your outgoing calling needs. Ask the right questions, collect surveys and conduct market research to identify customer preferences and behaviors. Online surveys are another way to collect data. With all such information, you will be able to tailor your content and selling pitch to meet specific concerns and solutions. Interview recent customers and reach out to abandoned cart customers, to try and understand what about your service encourages or discourages them.
Optimize Forms Used to Collect Information
Including forms on your website is a good way to gather information about your customers and prospects which can be later used to create personas. And so, when creating these forms, use form fields to gather specific data that helps you narrow down your customer’s profile. For example, if your personas vary based on the company’s size or based on their age range, then ask them to provide that information in the fields. Things to consider:
- Background (career path, family, job position)
- Demographics (male or female, age range, income, location)
- Identifiers (communication preferences, behavior)
- Looking for (solutions, luxury, improved quality, inexpensive budgeting, etc.)
- Goals (what they want to accomplish)
- Challenges and issues (faced at their workplace or home)
- How can your online business help? (make it easier for them to achieve goals)
- Reasons why they may reject your product (expensive, difficult to use, etc.)
- How can you market your product as an item or service they need? (present yourself as a solution)
Work with your Sales Team
Speak with sales about the leads they are interacting with. What are some common traits, concerns, questions, etc.? This information can give you general insights into the large group that you are working with. From there, you can then narrow down to create more specific buyer personas.
Consider Negative Personas
While a buyer persona is the representation of the perfect customer, a negative persona represents the opposite. Negative personas are people you absolutely do not want as a customer for your online business. Reasons why certain customer groups may harm your success rate:
- May not be able to afford your rates
- Need your content for research and not to purchase
- May become a customer but they were an expensive customer to acquire
- May be too advanced for what you are offering
Creating negative personas will ensure that your sales and marketing team is not wasting its time on weak customers and, instead, focus energies on the right ones.
Start Creating Your Buyer Persona
Whether it is improving communication by switching to a cloud-based phone service provider, like unitedworldtelecom.com, or increasing SEO efforts to make your website more relatable and rank higher in search results, make sure you invest in the right tools. Do what you need to for your online business to succeed and be smart about it.
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Writer Meryl D’Sa has written articles for platforms publishing content about travel, literature, communications, and more.