How to create a Buyer Profile or "Buyer Persona"

A well-detailed “Buyer Persona” or “Buyer Profile” allows you to personalize your marketing actions on a large scale by humanizing the target groups of your customer base. Both in the preparation of the right message for the right consumer, and in the application of your ads correctly, the personalization of your audience is mandatory in the digital world.

One important factor is that personalized marketing is the way your customers expect to receive your business communications. In fact, more than two-thirds of so-called “millennials” think so. However, executing such customization can be difficult for a large number of advertisers so I will tell you a little more about what it is about.

What is a Buyer Profile or "Buyer Persona"

The Buyer Profile is a model that describes your typical customer or target customer, based on detailed research of your audience.

The idea is to create a profile of your ideal client as if he or she were a punctual person, so that you can create personalized messages for them. These messages should use the correct tone of voice and meet those specific needs and desires of the person.

Since multiple groups of people can buy your products for multiple reasons, you will probably need to create more than one Buyer Profile. Each Profile should contain basic demographic information, behaviors, goals, unmet needs, and purchasing patterns of your user groups.

You can get to know your clients or prospects in depth individually so that with this Buyer Profile you have a representative from each of your target groups.

This process allows you to see your customers as real users and thus consider their needs when designing your marketing strategy.

How to create a Buyer Profile in 5 simple steps

In order to be useful, your Buyer Profile should be based on real data rather than hunches. In the same way, it is important to define the profile of the people who actually want to buy your products and not those who you want your buyers to be. For this it is important then to start with a good investigation.

Gather the information as you go through these 5 steps and use it to complete the ideal Buyer Profile for each segment.

1 - Do a thorough investigation of your audience.

Here's a basic introduction to the details needed to build your audience:

• Know who is already buying your products. Gather as much information as you can from your current customer base. Some of the key points you must obtain are: Age, location, language, income level, behaviors or buying patterns, interests, activities and stage of life (parenting, retirement, etc.). Once you have gathered as much information as possible from your buyers' statistics, try to verify this information with surveys via email, focus groups or even personal interviews.
• Find information from your website and analytics from your social channels. The use of social media analytics tools can provide a great deal of information about the people who interact with your brand online, even if they are not yet customers.
• Watch where the market is going. Once the information from your own customers and followers has been collected, see who is interacting with your competitors. With this information you can know how the fan base is made up with respect to your channels and those of other companies. By seeing this distribution you will be able to make strategic decisions based on the audiences you want to reach.

2 - identify the unmet needs of your customers

Find out what problems or annoyances your potential customers are trying to solve, what stops them from achieving their goals, and what barriers they encounter when trying to reach their goals.

A key way to find this information is to operate with some “listening” tools also called “listening”.

Setting up search flows to monitor mentions of your brand, products and competitors gives you a real-time view of what people are talking about your brand in the digital world. You can learn why your customers love your products, or what parts of the shopping experience are not working.

In the same way, it is important to check with your customer service (in case you have one), what questions they usually hear. Find out if they can help you identify patterns in which groups tend to make similar complaints. You can also ask your customer service team for the verbatim words to use to give your audience the response they want.

3 - Identify what your clients' objectives are

This would be the opposite side to the needs or points of dissatisfaction of your audience. While the above are problems that your potential clients are trying to solve, the objectives or goals are the positive way to represent the same situation once the problem is solved. These goals can be personal or professional depending on the kind of products and services you sell. That is why it is important that you understand what motivates your customers.

These motivations must be directly related to solutions that you can provide, although it is not exclusive that this is the case. This point is about getting to know your audience better, rather than trying to meet all the existing needs with your products or services.

Even if the objectives of your Customer Profiles do not relate specifically to the attributes of your products, you can form the basis of a campaign with this information or they can define the tone of the communication.

Just as the social channel listening tools and your customer service team can help you find what the needs of your audiences are, your sales team can know what their objectives are.

Your sales team talks to those people who are evaluating using your product, so they have a great understanding of what your customers are trying to achieve by choosing your brand. Ask them to come up with real phrases that represent the customer experience. You can also ask them for any strategy they use to overcome customer objections at the time of sale.

4 - Understand how your brand can help

Now that you understand the needs and goals of your customers, it is time to create a complete vision of how your products and services can help. As part of this step, you should avoid thinking about your brand in terms of its attributes and inquire about the benefits that customers receive.

It can be difficult for some advertisers to get out of the focus based on the attributes of their products, which is one of the reasons why this point is so important. This approach allows you to change the way you think and consider your products and services from the customer's point of view.

Remember that an attribute is a characteristic of your product, while a benefit is how your product or service makes life easier and better for your customers.

For each unmet need and objective or goal of your clients ask yourself the question, how can I help solve it? The answer will give you the foundation for the key messages that you will create in the next step.

5 - Turn your research into Buyer Profiles

Gather all your research and start looking for common characteristics. To the extent that you combine these characteristics, you will obtain the bases of Unique Buyer Profiles for your brand.

This is how it looks in practice. Let's say we identify a group of women in their 30s, who live in big cities, who like to go for a run, and own small dogs. Now we must take these characteristics and transform them into a "person" with whom you could talk and who you could identify.

Give this Buyer Profile a name, occupation, place of residence and other characteristics that define it. This profile should resemble a real person without being too specific, including all those characteristics that should be considered as part of this group of clients.

Try to keep the amount of information in this profile similar to what you would get from a conversation with someone during an airplane flight. Don't forget to include your unmet needs, your goals, and your objectives.

For example, the group of women who own small dogs and runners could be represented by the name of Juana. Instead of talking about people who live in cities that have dogs, you will give Juana characteristics that make her a "real" person.

• He is 35 years old
• Live in Buenos Aires
• Work at a technology company
• She owns a Chihuahua
• He likes to run in the Bosques de Palermo

And the list goes on.

Remember that a list of characteristics is not the same as a "Buyer Profile". This Profile is an ideal description of a person who represents a segment of your customer base. It is obvious that not all the people in this group fit exactly the characteristics of your “Consumer Profile”. This person represents this group of consumers and allows you to think of communication in a more human way and not as if it were a collection of data and information.

It is much easier to speak to Juana as a representative of a group, than to speak to women in general or even 35-year-old women with dogs.

As you develop your Buyer Profiles be sure to describe who each person is now and what they want to be in the future. This will allow you to think about how your products and services can help your customers reach their destination. t

How to use Buyer Profiles to articulate your Marketing campaigns

Thinking of Buyer Profiles as real people allows you to create marketing messages that speak to real people. Advertisers sometimes communicate with a corporate language that, although it contains many buzzwords, lacks meaning for the user. You are less likely to fall into such a trap when creating marketing messages specifically for Juana.

What questions does Juana have that your marketing message can answer? What social networks do you use? What kind of language do you use when interacting with your friends online? Thinking of Juana as a real person ensures that you address her priorities rather than your own.

This is where the answer to How can we help you? is put to the test. Create a marketing message for each buyer profile that answers the following question. How does your brand help a specific person solve their problems and meet their goals? Capture this in a clear sentence and add it to the document where you create this Buyer Profile.

Think about this Buyer Profile every time you make a business decision and carry out a marketing strategy. I follow these 5 steps and you will build a strong bond with the real customers that this character represents, generating sales, creating brand loyalty and trust.