What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a fictionalized customer profile created using customer data to represent a business's target audience. Also known as an audience persona, marketing persona, or customer persona, marketers often use buyer personas to create more effective campaigns.
Although every buyer persona is not a real person, the information used to create them is based on data and research from real customers of the business, often gathered through extensive market research services.
A persona's demographic information, interests, and behavioral patterns are all generated using aggregated data. This gives them a strong affinity with the customer segment they align with most, which marketing teams can use to craft messaging more specific to a real group of customers.
Buyer personas are an effective way to keep the voice and tone of marketing messaging consistent and audience appropriate, along with keeping a specific type of user in mind when developing new products or upgrading existing products.
Types of buyer personas
There are as many different buyer personas as they are individual personality traits and characteristics in real customers. But when narrowing down the specifics, most buyer personas can be categorized into one of four groups. These are:
- Competitive: Competitive personas are people who act logically but as fast as possible. They’re driven by their need to be better than the next person, but think rationally before deciding.
- Spontaneous: These personas are also fast actors but are led more by emotions than reason and logic. They often don’t need details and will make purchases based on whether or not they feel their needs are being met.
- Methodical: People who are methodical like the little details. They act slowly because they need time to weigh the pros and cons, get to know the process or product better, and do research.
- Humanistic: Like spontaneous personas, humanists are also driven by their feelings and emotions. They act slowly because they value building relationships before making decisions, which can take time to develop.
Basic elements of a buyer persona
Another way to think about buyer personas is as if they were a character profile. The information in a persona should produce a snapshot of who that person is, their basic details, along with some likes and dislikes that should be considered. Important details to include are:
- Name: Some marketing teams like to give their personas catchy names to make them more memorable, like Mom Mandy or Late-Night Gamer Gavin.
- Age: This is often a range, like 25-30. Knowing a persona’s rough age range means marketers can create more targeted messaging appropriate for their audience's life stage.
- Income and occupation: Depending on the type of product or service being sold, a customer’s level of disposable income is very important to know. The same goes for occupation, as it can provide information about a number of other areas, like what they’re interested in, what their day-to-day life looks like, and what kind of tools they use to complete their work.
- Location: Shopping behavior can often be determined by where someone lives. For instance, an individual living in a remote area where shipping a product could be difficult or costly is important to know before trying to market heavy or expensive items to them. Trends can also be seasonal, so it’s essential to know the climate of a given location when creating season-based marketing campaigns.
- Interests and hobbies: These factors can influence how they spend their time, indicating what they consider most important in their lives, along with details about who they might have in their wider social circle and network.
- Goals and pain points: This part of a buyer persona should focus on what the individual wants to achieve if they use the product or service. For example, they might aim to lose weight or spend less time working. This helps focus marketing messaging in the most specific way possible, highlighting how the product or service can overcome pain points or move them closer to their goal.
Benefits of a buyer persona
Even though buyer personas are fictional, they represent real individuals who could be potential customers. They enable teams to expand their potential reach and drive deeper engagement with a brand because:
- They support marketers in understanding their customers better: Buyer personas use real data, which can often lead to greater insight into who exactly marketing messages are being rolled out to. Knowing more about an audience allows marketing teams to tailor their campaigns to generate the best results possible.
- They create greater segmentation of target audiences: Segmenting audiences means that marketing budgets can be allocated according to who the most likely converters will be, saving money that can be used elsewhere.
- They support different teams to work together: It’s not only the marketing team who can use buyer personas. Sales teams often use these when pitching a new business to show that they understand the target audience and are the right fit for a potential partnership.
- They identify customers businesses don’t want: Knowing who the wrong audience is is as important as knowing who the right audience is. Buyer personas can also be created for negative customers, giving teams a clear picture of who they should not be spending marketing money on attracting.
Best practices for buyer personas
The best buyer personas are always evolving based on the needs of the business and target audience. That’s why it’s vital to continually review and implement best practices such as:
- Conducting frequent customer research: Using existing qualitative and quantitative data, teams should always gather as much information as possible from existing customers to ensure that crucial areas of a buyer persona, like pain points and goals, remain relevant.
- Acknowledging areas of bias: Everyone has biases, which can easily appear in buyer personas when fictional stereotypes are often relied on. Using actual customer data as much as possible can remove some of these unconscious biases. Still, checking for these throughout any significant revisions of a buyer persona or creating new ones is essential.
- Adding visuals for clarity: Using a picture, like a stock image, to bring a persona to life can make the fictional character more relatable and believable. This is one of the best ways to ensure teams consider the persona as a real customer, not something created internally as a marketing tactic.
Gain honest feedback from real customers and gather data in one centralized location using dedicated enterprise feedback management software.
Holly Landis
Holly Landis is a freelance writer for G2. She also specializes in being a digital marketing consultant, focusing in on-page SEO, copy, and content writing. She works with SMEs and creative businesses that want to be more intentional with their digital strategies and grow organically on channels they own. As a Brit now living in the USA, you'll usually find her drinking copious amounts of tea in her cherished Anne Boleyn mug while watching endless reruns of Parks and Rec.
