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Creating buyer persona(s) is an essential step in any marketing or sales strategy. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing (and potential new) customers. By creating buyer persona, you can better understand your target audience and tailor your marketing efforts to their specific needs and pain points. 
Before we dive into some basic steps, I want to start with this – have fun with it! Once you have some basic market research completed, you can “white-board it” and make a game of it with your team. Involve everyone. Maybe use it as a team-building luncheon. As the perfect persona is created, give the fictional character(s) a real name… talk about what music they listen to…what clothes they wear… what they complain about…what they are celebrating…what they do with their free time. Make them ‘real’. It will give your team some ownership in the marketing strategy
Ok. Here are the steps to creating effective buyer personas:
- Conduct market research: To create accurate buyer personas, you need to have a deep understanding of your target market. Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups to gather data about your customers’ demographics, behaviors, goals, and challenges. This will help you create detailed and realistic personas.
- Define your personas: Based on the data you have gathered, define your personas by giving them names, ages, occupations, etc. Make sure to include details about their goals, challenges, and the types of products or services they are interested in. You can create as many personas as you need, depending on the size and complexity of your target market.
- Create a customer journey map: To understand how your personas interact with your business, create a customer journey map that outlines the different stages of their buying process. This could include awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
- Use your personas: Once you have created your buyer personas, use them to inform your marketing and sales strategies. Use the insights gained from your personas to tailor your messaging, content, and product offerings to their specific needs and pain points.
By creating buyer personas, you can better understand your target audience and create more effective marketing and sales strategies. Take the time to conduct thorough market research and define your personas accurately to ensure that you are targeting the right customers with the right message.
Author: Joseph Poirier
Joe built his first website in 2003. Way back then, he moved his Real Estate company into email marketing and then social media marketing on MySpace – yes, you read that right – MySpace. Since then, he’s stayed immersed with all digital marketing channels and is a guru at ‘all things Google.’ Analytics, SEO and simplifying/optimizing complex sales funnels are his passions in the digital world, while his daughter, fishing, and various non-profits rule his free time.