22 Aug Buyer Persona Exercises

Before launching a new marketing campaign or initiative, it’s important to identify and profile specific audiences to target. This level of strategy and information is essential in choosing the most effective ways to communicate and create action with your audience. Below, we’ve given you some general steps and points to consider as you create and utilize your buyer persona.

1. Define ideal buyer persona
2. Identify buyer’s wants and needs
3. Create actual buyer snapshot
4. Create messaging concepts for your persona
5. Determine where he/she spends their time
6. Develop channels and tactics for your persona

FREE Buyer Persona Workbook, click here

 

Step 1: Define ideal buyer persona

Describe a client you’d love to acquire – because they’re ideally profitable or fall within a segment your organization is targeting. There will likely be multiple different ideal clients, each with their own respective attributes. Once you pick a group, here are a few sample questions you might ask about:

1. What are your target’s demographic attributes? Age? Income? Gender?
2. What is their stage of life or life situation? Retiree? College student? Parent of young children? Blue-collar worker?
3. Based on answer above, what types of products/services matter to them now? In the near future?

 

Step 2: Identify buyer’s wants and needs

Consider all reasons why each client type would work with you or buy from you. Reasons due to your organization’s differentiators are significantly more valuable than those that competitors match or beat. Sample questions might include:

1. What perspective of your product/service do they have before noticing your company?
2. Where do they get information? Who are their influencers?
3. What is your value proposition that meets their needs and frustrations?
4. How is this different from your competitors? Why does the difference matter to them?

 

Step 3: Create actual buyer snapshot

At a high-level, you’ll first want to think about who are the groups you want to reach? Then you’ll need to drill down and think of your target customer as a real person, with a face, a home and a life. Incorporate demographics, life stage, needs, goals, dreams, etc. Insert a theoretical headshot of that person as an individual, to help prevent messaging drift. See a sample below.

 

Step 4: Create messaging concepts for your persona

Develop words and ideas that appeal to, resonate with and create action in this audience. The ideas you develop at this stage can become the underlying themes and starting points for your marketing materials and campaigns. Based on these concepts, you may develop ad headlines, email subject lines, talking points for your sales team, blog articles, etc. Most importantly, this stage gets you thinking about how should you position and describe your solution to THIS persona? These messages should be:

• Clear — a confusing message gets lost
• True — your company must be able to back up the solution
• Important — to break through the clutter, your message must be important to your buyer

 

Phase 5: Determine where he/she spends their time

Let’s consider all lifestyle activities and communication channels frequented and used by your buyer. Those channels associated more directly with your product/service are vital, but don’t neglect less obvious segments, which can offer less competition for attention. Channels can include:

 

Step 6: Develop channels and tactics for your persona

Now let’s put it all together and develop the channels and tactics to reach out and ENGAGE our targeted buyers. What are the activities, events, and/or materials—to be used in your selected channels—that will most effectively carry your message to the intended audiences? In choosing these, you should consider:

• Appropriateness to audience, goal, and message
• Relevance to desired outcomes
• Timing
• Costs/Resources
• Environment—geographic considerations

Don’t forget, you should create each tactic with visuals and words aimed at wants/needs from Step 2. You’ll have to insert your own specific marketing channels and types of tactics you can use to reach your persona, but here’s a sample list of channels and tactics.

 

Get a FREE Buyer Persona Workbook, click here