\n<\/p>\n
As a kid, you may have had an imaginary friend. Social media marketers have them, too. Only, in our case, they\u2019re called buyer personas<\/strong> or audience personas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Unlike the ones from your childhood, these imaginary friends are an incredibly helpful tool for targeting your ideal customer.<\/p>\n As a social marketer (or any marketer, for that matter) it\u2019s easy to get lost in the details of tracking your latest engagement rates and marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n Buyer personas remind you to prioritize your audience\u2019s wants and needs over your own and help you create content that better targets your ideal customer.<\/p>\n Read on for a buyer persona definition, examples, and a free buyer persona template.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bonus: <\/strong>Get the free template<\/strong><\/span> to easily craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer and\/or target audience.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your <\/strong>target audience<\/strong><\/a>. While fictional, this persona is based on deep research of your existing or desired audience and can be used to refine your marketing strategy and product positioning.<\/p>\n A buyer persona is also called a customer persona, audience persona, or marketing persona. Different types of customers buy your products for different reasons, so you might need to create more than one buyer persona.<\/p>\n Why are these tools useful? Well, you can\u2019t get to know every customer or prospect individually. However, you can<\/em> create customer personas to represent your customer base.<\/p>\n Give each buyer persona a name, demographic details, interests, and behavioral traits. Take time to understand their goals, pain points, and buying patterns. If you want, you can even give them a face using stock photography or illustration.<\/p>\n You want to think about and speak about this model customer as if they were a real person. This will allow you to craft marketing messages targeted specifically to them.<\/p>\n Keeping your buyer persona (or personas) in mind helps ensure consistency across the board, from product development and brand voice to the social channels you use.<\/p>\n Building a useful buyer persona requires a ton<\/em> of research into your target market. You\u2019ll need deep knowledge of who you\u2019re selling to in order to create your ideal buyer persona.<\/p>\n Along the way, you\u2019ll discover what makes your prospective customers tick, what they want out of life, what they\u2019re afraid of, and what irritates them. You can use this information to create tailored solutions to your most valuable customers\u2019 biggest problems.<\/p>\n Buyer personas aren\u2019t just for the marketing department. Your friends in product development will want to know who is buying your product and why.<\/p>\n When you know what\u2019s working, what\u2019s not, and what\u2019s wanted, you can optimize every customer-facing aspect of your business, including your product, website and apps.<\/p>\n The better you know who you\u2019re marketing to, the more personal you can get. Creating content for <\/em>a specific person can help you increase your marketing ROI.<\/p>\n Personalized product recommendations based on customer preferences can increase conversion rates and <\/em>customer retention. It\u2019s all about making it easy for your customers to make a purchasing decision by presenting them with marketing aligned with their interests and needs.<\/p>\n Also, once you know who <\/em>you\u2019re marketing to, you can better segment your campaigns. Properly segmented campaigns serve your ads to an audience who is receptive to them.<\/p>\n Your sales team will love <\/em>buyer personas. They (or you, if you\u2019re a solopreneur who does your own sales) can use buyer personas to understand how the audience makes purchasing decisions.<\/p>\n Personas can highlight what influences the customer and which external factors are at play. The sales team can use this information to know which prospects to target and which sales tactics to use.<\/p>\n If you know what your customers want, then you can give it to them. This will help with customer acquisition and retention.<\/p>\n All departments\u2014product development, sales, marketing, design, and leadership\u2014need to understand who they\u2019re trying to target. That way, everyone is rowing in the same direction.<\/p>\n Knowing who you don\u2019t <\/em>want as a customer can help you specify your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say one of your business goals is to attract and retain higher-value customers. Perhaps you want to change your main client base from start-ups to mid-level agencies. You can adjust your marketing language from \u201cWe can help you get off the ground and scale up\u201d to \u201cWe can help you streamline workflows to better save money.\u201d<\/p>\n Buyer personas can be as detailed or as simple as you\u2019d like to make them. There are no hard and fast rules for creating personas; they just need to work for your business.<\/p>\n Still, there are similarities between successful customer personas. And, by studying these similarities, you\u2019ll have a better idea of how to create buyer personas for your own business.<\/p>\n Here are a few categories you can include in your buyer personas:<\/p>\n Demographic profiles<\/strong> focus on the who<\/strong> and what<\/strong> of your buyer. These include objective data points like age<\/strong>, gender<\/strong>, and income<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Psychographic profiles<\/strong> take into context your buyer\u2019s subjective data<\/strong>, which might include religions<\/strong>, belief systems<\/strong>, values<\/strong>, goals<\/strong>, and attitudes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Here are a few demographic and psychographic attributes you can include in your buyer persona:<\/p>\n Want to learn more? Here are over 100 social media demographics marketers<\/a> find useful.<\/p>\n Just a note<\/strong>: You don\u2019t need to make up these details from scratch\u2014in fact, you shouldn\u2019t. In the next section, we go into detail on how to uncover these attributes.<\/p>\n What does your ideal buyer hold near and dear to their heart? Understanding your buyer\u2019s values<\/strong> and desires <\/strong>will help you uncover their motivations and understand the decisions they make.<\/p>\n Maybe they care deeply about the environment or have a soft spot for animals. Maybe their values are more introspective and focused on personal or spiritual growth.<\/p>\n In the same vein, what does your persona desire<\/strong>? Do they want more free time? Or to have more buying power? Their pain points<\/strong> are equally as important. What\u2019s causing friction within their lives?<\/p>\n Include these attributes in your persona:<\/p>\n Make a note of the groups, organizations, social platforms, and social circles your buyer persona belongs to.<\/p>\n Are they on LinkedIn but not Instagram? Do they belong to a book club or a gym? What is their favorite place to get groceries?<\/p>\n B2B customer personas have a few more specifics than B2C because they also have to consider the business and not just the buyer.<\/p>\n B2B customer personas might include:<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve filled out your buyer persona details, it can be helpful to contextualize it for anyone using your guide.<\/p>\n Make a note of:<\/p>\n Hootsuite\u2019s free buyer persona template will help you set up a persona in no time.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bonus: <\/strong>Get the free template<\/strong><\/span> to easily craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer and\/or target audience.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Your buyer persona shouldn\u2019t just be someone you want to hang out with; it should be based on real-world data and strategic goals.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to craft a fictional customer who fits your real-world brand perfectly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time to dig deep. You\u2019re going to want to look into who your existing customers are, who your social audience is, and who your competitors are targeting.<\/p>\n Psst<\/strong>: You can take an in-depth look at these concepts in the complete guide to audience research<\/a>.<\/p>\n Compiling audience data from your social media analytics<\/a> (especially Facebook Audience Insights<\/a>), customer database, and Google Analytics will help you identify details about your existing audience and social audience.<\/p>\n Audience data can also come from surveys and form fields, speaking to your sales team (they\u2019ll have great insight on what makes up a quality lead), and doing customer interviews.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good idea to know which social channels your audience uses and why. Use social listening tools like Hootsuite<\/a> to find out where they spend time online.<\/p>\nWhat is a buyer persona?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
7 benefits of buyer personas<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. A deeper understanding of your ideal customer<\/h3>\n
2. Evolved, intentional product development<\/h3>\n
3. Better ROI through personalized marketing campaigns<\/h3>\n
4. Better-informed sales efforts<\/h3>\n
5. Improved customer acquisition and retention<\/h3>\n
6. Cross-department alignment<\/h3>\n
7. Negative personas<\/h3>\n
What every buyer persona should include<\/span><\/h2>\n
Demographic and psychographic profiles<\/h3>\n
\n
Values, desires, and pain points<\/h3>\n
\n
Affiliations<\/h3>\n
Business-specific attributes (for B2B customer personas)<\/h3>\n
\n
How to add your business to your buyer persona<\/h3>\n
\n
How to create a buyer persona in 4 steps<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. Do thorough audience research<\/h3>\n