Buyer personas are an important aspect of your small business. When you know your business's buyer persona, you're empowered to market better, offer relevant services and products, provide exceptional customer service and serve valuable content.
On the other hand, not taking the time to understand your businesses buyer persona can lead to ineffective business decisions.
Let's get into exactly what a buyer persona is, how to create one and why they matter.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a character who represents your customer population or a portion of it. This persona is created by using market research and data about your current customers.
Buyer personas help you, the business owner, learn who is currently frequenting your business and how to attract new kinds of customer bases.
Understanding your business's buyer persona can help you add personalized touches in marketing and create more effective services and products. When you understand your personas, you can tailor your content, products and services to better fit their needs.
Customers know when a business understands their specific needs. When people feel continually known and served, they'll become loyal customers!
How to Create Buyer Personas for Your Small Business
When creating buyer personas, it's important to consider the demographics, behaviors and goals of your current customers. The more details you can include, the better!
The first step when creating a buyer persona is doing research, conducting surveys and interviewing your current target audience.
To help you gather this information, here are a few simple things you can do:
- Sort through your current contacts and look for trends
- Create forms on your website that gather personal information
- Interview both customers and prospects
Once you've gathered your data, it’s time to dive into that information and look for patterns and trends. The similarities can help you build your buyer persona!
If this is your first time creating a buyer persona, check out this tool to help you get started.
Buyer Persona Example
Let’s say you own a beachside health food restaurant and are looking to find your ideal customer. You've done some research, sent surveys and conducted interviews. Once you've compiled all the information, here's an example of your buyer persona:
With this buyer persona, it's easy to picture Wanda’s life. Even though this information may have taken a while to retrieve from your research, you now have a buyer persona and can better understand and serve your customers!
Knowing what your current customer base's needs are can also be an effective tool in helping your business expand into new markets. While doing buyer persona research, it's likely you'll stumble upon areas of needs that your business can solve, but currently doesn't. You may also be introduced to similar audiences who would frequent your business if only a few small tweaks were made.
Creating effective buyer personas is a process and we recommend revisiting it regularly as consumer's expectations and behaviors constanty shift. When you get your personas right, your business will feel it and so will your customers!
Final Thoughts
Even if you think you know your ideal customer, it’s possible that you’re missing an entire audience!
Buyer personas do take some time to create, but in the end, they allow you to provide more value to your customers because you’re delivering what they actually want.
When you understand your customers, they will notice, and they will return to your small business!
RevLocal specializes in creating personalized digital marketing strategies for small businesses and multi-location brands. To learn more about our services, contact us or check out our other resources!