Why building customer personas will accelerate your sales   

Who is your perfect customer? What makes them tick? And, importantly, how should you market to them to maximise sales? These are all crucial questions business owners need to ask themselves. And building customer personas is the key to success.

Why customer personas are important

Understanding your target audience will help you generate marketing campaigns and content that will resonate with your ideal customers. 

It can be very easy to slip into jargon and corporate-speak when you are at the heart of your business. But do your customers understand or care about the inner workings of your latest gizmo? Or do they just want to know it can eliminate a pain point in their life?

Researching and creating a set of customer or buyer personas will ensure you put your audience’s wants and needs at the forefront of your messaging, making your marketing more effective. After all, customers aren’t interested in improving your bottom line; they want products and services they need.

What is a customer persona?

Think of it as the lead character in your business story. A customer persona embodies everything that would make your perfect buyer. 

It should include their:

• Demographics
• Career or job title
• The type of home they live in
• Stage of life
• Interests
• Personal traits

You can even give them a name. It’s very likely that your business will have several different types of customers so rather than call them persona one, two and three, think of them as real people with real problems and desires. A name will make it easier to identify with them.

How to build buyer personas

Good research is key. Consider their age, location, income, interests and what stage of life they are at, for example, are they in education, do they have a family or are they retired?

If you don’t already have this information in a customer database you can find it out by delving into your own business.

Google Analytics, Google Search Console and social media insights are incredibly useful resources. Facebook, in particular, holds a wealth of data about the people who follow your Business Page.

If you have a customer service team or staff who interact with customers regularly speak to them about the questions they get asked, comments they receive and the problems people share with them. 

They may also have insights about your customers’ aspirations and goals. Knowing what your customers want to achieve could help with the development of your next product.

Social media is another good place to conduct research. You don’t have to ask questions here. Simply listen. Look at mentions about your company and the discussions your followers are engaging in. It may be that a large portion of your customer base is interested in a particular hobby. This could guide your future marketing.

Pulling together this research will enable you to create your characters or customer personas.

How to use personas

Once you have your set of customer personas you can start segmenting your workflows. Everything from product development to social media activity can be targeted specifically at a section of your customer base.

You will be able to think about: how you can help them as individuals; what might be stopping them making a purchase now; and how you can guide them along the path to buying.

You can also gauge whether a campaign is heading in the right direction. If it’s not meeting the needs of at least one of your business’ leading characters then you need to reconsider it.

If you would like to find out more about how to build customer personas for your business then we can help. 

Amplify PR is a Southampton-based PR and content marketing agency that does more than shouting into a void. We work with clients to understand their perfect audience and create content that drives sales. Get in touch with us to build a better relationship with your customers.