How To Create Buyer Personas For Clients In 7 Steps
Before you can tackle any part of the sales funnel, you need to determine your target audience. This is a more complex process than simply deciding who you want to reach, however. The very first step in the sales process is to determine who you want to sell to, and by far the most popular and efficient way to do this is by creating buyer personas.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of client buyer personas and how to go about creating them.
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What is a Buyer Persona, and Why are Buyer Personas Important?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of an organization’s ideal customer. Data and research are gathered from existing customers or clients to paint a clear picture of who the company’s ideal customer is, what they do, and what motivates them.
A business can have multiple buyer personas at one time, each targeting a different part of the sales funnel or a different product or service entirely. Buyer personas can help the business to determine what audience they should target, and how exactly to do so.
Buyer personas are an incredibly important step in lead generation, as they serve to determine who your potential leads are and help you to identify their needs, pain points, and expectations. Essentially, without having detailed buyer personas, you would be targeting random people with no specific need or desire for what you have to offer.
Creating buyer personas for your target audience can help you to identify and define who exactly you want to offer your product or service to, and it can make the lead generation process much more efficient. 24% of companies included in this report generated more leads using buyer personas, and 56% of those companies reported generating higher quality leads after using buyer personas. Highlighting the benefit of buyer personas.
How Do You Create a Good Buyer Persona?
Step 1️⃣: Research
Before creating your buyer personas, you need to research who your existing clients are. This will give you an idea of what your future clients look like, their demographics and interests, and how you can best appeal to them. Additionally, think of the type of client your company wants to target, their demographics, interests, and needs. You can also look at how your competitors are targeting their audiences for inspiration. For this, consider using tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, which can provide data on the demographic characteristics of your competitors’ audience.
Step 2️⃣: Organize Your Information
Next, you can start organizing the information you’ve collected in your research. Arrange the personas by demographics, industry, job title, and create a few different client buyer personas based on that information. Choose which personas you want to target first, and keep the secondary buyer personas to focus on later.
Step 3️⃣: Define the Different Personas
Give each of your client buyer personas a ‘name’ and a story. Think of it like creating a fictional character for your business, complete with a backstory, a personality, and even their age and gender. Here are some things to focus on when defining your different client buyer personas:
- Age
- Gender
- Job title
- Industry
- Location
- Hobbies & Interests
- Career Goals
- Motivations
Step 4️⃣: Identify Their Roles
Identify and define the ‘role’ that each of your client buyer personas play in their lives. Look at the information that’s relevant to their job title and their role at their job, as well as their role outside of work. Do they volunteer, are they parents, do they manage people at work? This information can give you context about their ‘roles’ in their lives. When you know a person’s roles in their own life, you can create content that speaks directly to them.
Step 5️⃣: Identify Their Goals
Try to identify what each of your personas’ goals are, and determine if they align with what you’re trying to sell them. Imagine that you are trying to sell paid advertising services to your clients. Does your persona’s goal align with what you are offering? If their goal is to increase their product’s visibility and sales, then they are a good persona to focus on. However, if their goal is to optimize their website for search engines, then paid advertising is not the answer for them.
Step 6️⃣: Identify Their Pain Points
This is arguably the most important part of creating your buyer personas. Try to identify their pain points and the challenges they are facing. This will help you to best appeal to them and know what content to put out. Here are some questions to ask yourself when doing research on their pain points:
- What is keeping them from reaching their goals?
- What parts of their job are difficult?
- Do they have trouble selling initiatives up to their boss?
- What are their concerns and worries?
- Do they have enough time to focus on their business’s challenges?
Try to be as specific as possible when answering these questions. This will help you position yourself as a solution to their pain points when generating leads.
Step 7️⃣: Create Marketing & Sales Strategies
Now that you have your client buyer personas ready, you can start to create marketing and sales strategies that specifically tailor to their demographics, job titles, interests, roles, goals, and pain points.
What Types of Buyer Personas Are There?
✅ Competitive Buyer Persona:
- Highly focused on gaining a competitive advantage.
- Values features, functionality, and performance over other factors.
- Seeks products or services that outperform competitors.
- Responds well to messages highlighting superiority and market dominance.
✅ Spontaneous Buyer Persona:
- Makes quick purchasing decisions based on emotions and impulses.
- Values instant gratification and seeks excitement.
- Responds well to limited-time offers, exclusive deals, and impulse-driven marketing tactics.
- Engaging storytelling and appealing visuals can capture their attention.
✅ Humanistic Buyer Persona:
- Values relationships, trust, and empathy in the buying process.
- Considers the impact on people and society when making purchasing decisions.
- Seeks brands that align with their values, such as sustainability or social responsibility.
- Responds well to personalized and authentic messaging that demonstrates care for customers and communities.
✅ Methodical Buyer Persona:
- Analytical and detail-oriented in their decision-making process.
- Focuses on gathering information, conducting research, and comparing options.
- Values reliability, accuracy, and evidence-based decision-making.
- Responds well to in-depth product descriptions, data-driven content, and case studies.
Buyer Persona Template: John Pearl White
As a web designer/programmer, you have identified an opportunity to serve small business owners in your local area who have poorly designed websites. To better understand and effectively target this market, you have decided to create a buyer persona that reflects the characteristics of the small business owners who are most likely to benefit from your services.
John Pearl White is a skilled dentist with a thriving practice in a bustling urban area. He prides himself on providing top-quality care to his patients and helping them achieve their best possible smiles. John has a warm and friendly demeanor, which puts his patients at ease and makes them feel comfortable during their visits. In his free time, John enjoys reading about the latest developments in dentistry and attending continuing education courses to stay up-to-date with the latest techniques and technologies. He is committed to providing his patients with the best possible care and experiences and is always looking for ways to improve his practice.
| Industry | Medical |
| Target Audience | Small business owners looking to improve their online presence and attract new patients |
| Age | 30-60 |
| Gender | Male and female |
| Location | United States |
| Education level | College degree or higher |
| Occupation | Medical professionals, practice owners, and office managers |
| Income | $100,000 – $250,000 per year |
| Goals and motivations | To improve their online visibility, attract new patients, and provide a professional and informative online presence for their existing patients. |
| Pain points and challenges | Limited time and resources for managing their website, difficulty creating a website that effectively represents their brand and services, and concerns about the cost of website design and maintenance. |
| Purchasing decisions | Cost, expertise, and experience of the website design agency, and the ability of the agency to create a website that effectively represents their brand and services. |
| Communication channels and sources of information | Social media, search engines, industry publications and events, online reviews, and email newsletters. |
| Objections or concerns | Cost, expertise and experience of the website design agency, and the ability of the agency to create a website that effectively represents their brand and services. |
| Other factors | The target audience may prioritize user-friendly navigation, patient testimonials and reviews, and clear and concise information about their services. |
Client Buyer Persona Template (Copy & Paste)
Persona Name:
Type of Buyer Persona:
Industry:
Target Audience:
Age:
Gender:
Location:
Education Level:
Occupation:
Income Bracket:
Goals & Motivations
Challenges & Pain Points:
Purchasing Decisions:
Communication Channels or Sources of Information:
Objections or Concerns:
Other Factors:What is a Negative Buyer Persona?
Buyer personas outline your ideal clients, while ‘negative’ buyer personas represent the types of clients that you want to exclude from your marketing and sales strategies.
Negative buyer personas may not be in your ideal target market. They may only engage with your content for research purposes, they may not be decision-makers, and they may be too difficult or costly to target, which is why buyer personas are important.
Negative personas are used to outline the type of client you do not want to target to avoid spending unnecessary time and resources. They can also be used to optimize your ‘positive’ buyer personas.
Conclusion
Creating buyer personas is a critical step in lead generation and can help businesses to define their target audience and tailor their marketing and sales strategies accordingly.
You can develop an effective strategy to appeal to potential clients by conducting thorough research and defining your different buyer personas. Negative buyer personas can also be useful in excluding the types of clients that do not align with your business’s goals.
Overall, by creating buyer personas, you can generate more, higher-quality leads, making the sales process more efficient and effective.
