Why You Need Buyer Personas to Achieve Marketing Success

In the world of inbound, content-based marketing, one of the key components are unique buyer personas. These personas, if implemented correctly, can help you tailor your content to produce more viable leads over time.

What is a buyer persona?

HubSpot defines a buyer persona as a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

These personas should be comprehensive, including the demographics, goals, and common objectives of your ideal customer.  Major companies, like Apple, have been using personas for years to craft products with stellar reviews and record sales.

Why do you need to start using buyer personas?

Crafting an accurate representation of your customer will help your marketing strategy in four major ways.

1. You can understand your customer.
   Through qualified market research, you can identify exactly what makes your customer tick. Marketing’s main goal is to find ways to attract visitors and convert them into viable leads. The fact is that only 25% of leads are qualified and should be passed on to a sales team.  How do you find out what leads are qualified and which still need to be nurtured in order to be ready for the next step? It’s by understanding the motivations, goals, and common objections of your ideal customer that can only be achieved by creating buyer personas.
2. You can tailor your message.
   Once you understand your customer through the buyer persona, you can craft language and messaging that appeals directly to them.  You wouldn’t try to attract hummingbirds with nuts and seeds meant for squirrels. The same theory applies to communications in business, knowing your customer means you can set out the messaging and marketing that attracts for them.
3. You can spend your marketing dollars in the right places.
   It’s an ongoing challenge for marketers to spend their marketing budget in the most effective way possible. If you understand your customer through buyer persona research, you can spend your budget on the marketing channels that work best.  Many channels even allow you to narrow down your demographics to pinpoint the exact customer you’re hoping to reach. Just check out how many parameters you can use in Facebook Ad campaigns.
4. You can increase your conversion rates.
   When you understand your customer, craft messaging that speaks directly to them, and place it in the channel they are most likely to use, a magical thing happens! You’ll gain more visitors to your content, more of those visitors will become leads, and more of those leads will be qualified enough for sales to convert them into customers.  Better conversion rates are the natural progression once your marketing strategy has included buyer personas as a priority.

If you were wondering why you need buyer personas for your business, the fact that they assist you to understand your customer, better tailor your messaging and marketing channels, and increase your conversion rates should be reason enough for you to start researching your ideal customer.

Creating buyer personas doesn’t have to be difficult process. Make the process easy with our free template.