Defining the Buyer Persona
Remember when you were a kid, and your favorite thing to do was play house, or school, or army rangers? Any kind of pretend game was fun because it allowed you and your friends to be an imagined form of a person you admired and wanted to emulate. Buyer personas are essentially the same as playing pretend, only a more “grown-up” version. HubSpot defines a buyer persona as “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers." But just how does this help your digital marketing efforts? Well, let’s play pretend!
You are a high-end beauty salon that has just hired a new make-up artist for weddings, prom, and other special events. You need to get her some new business, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money chasing leads that may not exist. Instead, you decide to create a buyer persona to help you narrow down potential leads. By looking through what data you have on current customers, you are able to determine that:
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The salon’s clientele age range is from 30 to 50
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Of those clients, half are unmarried
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The average income is between $75,000 and $100,000 annually
Although the data you have found from current and previous clients still leaves you with a large pool of buyers, you can narrow this down even further by coming to an educated guesstimate of what your preferred buyer’s persona looks like:
Make-up Madison is a girl aged between 30 and 50 years. She always likes to look her best, but doesn’t put a lot of money into a service or product right away until she knows she likes the company. She is engaged and currently planning her wedding. Her income is between $75,000 and $100,000 a year, and she most likely works in a socially inclined environment. She’s always on social media pages, especially her Facebook profile. She has a lot of friends who look to her for fashion and beauty advice and she loves showing off her new finds for them on social media and in-person.
Wow! That seems like a pretty narrowed down version of your perfect buyer, but now it’s time to put this persona into effect.
Buyer-Centric Marketing
What’s the first step after developing Make-up Madison’s persona? You need to develop an offer that strictly applies to a service or product that Madison would want or need. Everything you do from this point forward applies strictly to Madison and the persona you created.
An offer doesn’t have to be a coupon or special, it can be as simple as a piece of content. For instance, if you publish a blog post about the upcoming wedding season, including information about different types of make-up applications, differences between water and silicone based products, and choices of color pallets, include a CTA. The CTA, in this case, could be called “5 Things You Need to Know About Make-up on Your Wedding Day.” Once your buyer, Make-up Madison, clicks on the link, she will be brought to a landing page where she will be prompted to download a guide titled “Wedding Make-up Look Guide.”
It is important that your landing page has the following characteristics, according to HubSpot:
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No navigation outside of the page
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Clear, concise heading
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Sub-heading describing the benefit of the offer
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A Bulleted list that explains what the offer is, and what the customer will receive after completing the form
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A form that asks for information from the customer, the amount dependent upon what you are offering the buyer
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Testimonials (if applicable)
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Awards (if applicable)
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Image to attract the buyer to your offer
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Social media buttons
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After completion of form, a pop up asking if the customer would like to receive a follow up call.
You now have more information on Madison and how to contact her personally for future emails, promotions, coupons, specials, etc. You can request that Madison fill out a survey about how she enjoyed your customer service in order to improve future transactions with other buyers, and perhaps Madison will become a promotor for your brand, inviting her friends, co-workers, family, etc. to use your services!
With HubSpot’s closed-loop reporting, you can easily see what content and offers are generating better sales, and how much revenue you have generated with each campaign. That way, you can see which campaigns are working, and which you may need to change your approach on in order to increase profit.
Want to find our more about buyer personas and how they can help your business? Give us a call at 412-942-0222 or fill out the form on our Contact Us page and we'll reach out to you.
