It is essential to understand your customers for any business to be successful. Many startups fail because they try to market to everyone; if you market to everyone; your message will be muddied and unclear.
That’s why businesses create a “buyer persona.”
A “buyer persona” will assist you with identifying who your ideal consumer is along with their issues and why your offering is an excellent solution. With a good understanding of your ideal consumer, your marketing efforts will be focused and effective.
In this article, you will learn about buyer personas and their importance, along with how to create a simple template for yourself.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A “buyer persona” is a basic profile of your ideal consumer.
By developing a buyer persona, you will include various data points, such as:
- Age Range
- Employment
- Goals
- Issues
- Purchasing Behavior
- Interests
When you create a buyer persona, you’re no longer thinking about customers as a group of people, but rather you are creating a profile of one unique individual.
For example:
- Name: Alex
- Age: 25-35
- Occupation: Business Owner/Startup
- Goal: Grow business quickly
- Issue: Needs affordable advertising services
Now when you develop/produce brochures, website pages, or any advertising message, you will know that the materials would be beneficial for Alex!
This makes your messaging more personal and clear. 
Why Buyer Personas Are Important
A common mistake many businesses have is making decisions based on an assumption. A buyer persona allows you to make more informed decisions based on actual knowledge of your customers.
Below are just some of the reasons why buyer personas are essential.
1. Creation of Superior Marketing Messages
Using a buyer persona allows you to provide clear, concise marketing messages to a specific audience.
Two examples:
A generic message might state, “We offer digital marketing services.”
A message using a buyer persona would state, “Digital Marketing Services for Small Online Business.”
This is more specific, increasing the likelihood of the prospect responding favorably to your message.
A clear message becomes even more powerful when combined with a strong unique value proposition, which explains why customers should choose your business.
2. Design of Better Products/Services
By having a better understanding of your buyers, you will develop products that actually help them solve real-life problems.
Some of the questions you might want to answer are:
- What features are most important?
- What price range would they be comfortable paying?
- What problems do they experience in their everyday life?
The answers you discover from your buyer persona will allow you to design products/solutions that they need.
3. Increased Conversion Rate(s)
Consumers are more apt to purchase products that they believe were designed with them in mind.
By having a well-defined buyer persona, every time a visitor lands on your website, they will think, “This product is made for someone like me.”
Increased trust = Higher conversion.
4. More Effective Content
Having a defined target market simplifies creating content for your audience.
You create targeted pieces that respond to your audience’s specific needs.
For instance, if you define your buyer persona as a freelancer, you would likely produce content around:
- Finding clients as a freelancer
- Maximising productivity through tools and techniques specifically geared towards freelancers
- Pricing strategies when working freelance
Understanding your audience also helps in making key decisions like choosing the right brand identity. Learn how to choose a strong name with these business name ideas for your startup.
Easy Buyer Persona Template
To create a buyer persona, you don’t require complicated templates or lengthy documents.
A simple template is all you need to follow.
Here’s an example of a basic template for a buyer persona:
Basic Information
- Name: Alex
- Age Range: 25-35
- Location: Urban areas
- Job Title: Entrepreneur/start-up founder
Identify Goals
- Grow revenue
- Save time by using digital tools
- Build a brand identity
Problems
- Limited Marketing budget
- Lack of technical skills/knowledge
- There are too many tools and too many options available online
Identify Interests
- Increase Revenue
- Increase productivity by use of tools
- Learn strategies for growing your business online
Identify Purchasing Behaviours
- Research before purchasing
- Read reviews and blogs before purchasing
- Like simple solutions
By using this template to create your buyer personas, you can easily identify your ideal customer.
How to Create a Buyer Persona
Here’s a quick and easy guide to building a buyer persona from scratch.
1. Market Research
To get started you will want to research your current or future customers to find out more about who they are.
This can be done through:
- Interviews with customers
- Surveys
- Analytics from your website
- Insights from social media
- Support questions, emails etc
Look for patterns in customer’s needs and behaviours.
2. Identify Their Pain Points
Find out what customer problems exist, how they affect your customers and what solutions they have already tried.
Ask your customer questions, like:
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- What are some of the frustrations you have with the current solutions?
- What outcome or end result do you desire?
These customer pain points will help you identify the marketing message you will use moving forward.
3. Identify Customer Goals
Knowing customer goals is important to understand along with customer pain points.
Examples of goals:
- Make more money
- Grow my business
- Spend less time on XYZ
- Improve my skills
Your product/service should help a customer remain focused on their goals.
4. Understand Their Path to Purchase
People do not make an immediate purchase. People go through a process to make a purchase.
The purchase process often goes through the following steps:
- Identifying the problem
- Searching for a solution
- Comparing options
- Making a purchase decision
Knowing this buying process will help you create more effective marketing content.
5. Give Your Persona a Personality
Adding names and personalities to buyer personas will make them feel more human in your mind.
For example, Alex is a small business owner who is 30 years of age and is trying to grow his online store but is struggling with digital marketing. He tends to go to Google and look for journal articles, video tutorials on YouTube before he purchases any tool that would help him out.
When you have a way of visualizing what a person like Alex needs and how they think about their industry, purchasing decisions, and how to grow their business, it makes it easier for you to write a plan on how to grow your business, develop a marketing strategy, and understand the types of customers you want to target.
A complete example of a buyer persona
Sarah
28 – 40 years old
Sarah is a small business owner.
Goals
- Grow my online sales as quickly as possible
- Create a more visible brand image
- Build customer confidence in your business
Challenges
- Limited experience in the marketing field
- Digital/small business tools – confusing
- It takes a lot of time to effectively develop/manage my business’s marketing strategies
Purchasing Behaviour
- Sarah is more likely to read blogs and articles than watch videos
- Sarah prefers to find simple and inexpensive tools before making a purchase
This persona will be used for building out your marketing strategies.
How Buyer Personas Improve Branding
By knowing clearly who your audience is, you improve the branding message of your company by making it:
- More relatable
- More precise
- More human
This aligns the messaging, tone, and content you produce with what your target audience is looking for.
If you would like to learn more about how branding aligns with targeted audience, check out our guide about Brand Positioning and Startup Branding.
Common Mistakes When Creating Buyer Personas
Some businesses will create buyer personas that are too complicated and/or unrealistic.
Here are common mistakes to avoid.
Guessing Instead of Researching
Whenever possible, your buyer persona should be based on actual data.
Don’t make assumptions about your customers at random.
Utilizing Too Many Buyer Personas
If you have an overload of more than two or three buyer personas in your marketing efforts, your marketing becomes disorganized.
For the majority of startup companies, start off with 1-2 buyer personas to begin with.
Using Only Demographic Information
While we can use demographic information such as age and location it is more important that we know what motivates, encourages and moves our audience to purchase.
When building your buyer persona focus on:
- The Problem
- The Motive
- The Buying Habit
Not Changing Buyer Personas
As the customer changes over time so will the buyer persona. As your company continues to grow and develop, the buyer persona should evolve as well.
Make time regularly to review your buyer persona to ensure it still correctly represents your target audience.
Using Buyer Personas in Marketing
When you finish creating a buyer persona use that persona to make all of your marketing.
For instance:
Website Content
When creating the website content write headlines that will relate to the problems that your buyer persona faces.
Blog Content
The blog content should be to answer the typical questions your buyer persona will have.
Social Media
Social media content will include posts that provide valuable tips and insights related to the lifestyle of the buyer persona.
Advertising
Advertising should be directed at the interests and the purchasing habits of the buyer persona.
Final Thoughts
Your target audience can be better understood through the creation of a buyer persona.
Your marketing efforts will be directed toward an identified group rather than everyone; therefore, you will know which individuals have a greater likelihood of obtaining a benefit from your services or products.
Start by creating a buyer persona. Learn from your existing audience, using this information to refine your buyer persona over time. The more you learn about your audience, the greater the effectiveness of your marketing, branding, and product development will become.