As a business owner, employee or otherwise you should know your buyer persona in order to be able to create content and marketing strategies that will appeal to them and encourage them to enter the buying cycle.

What Is A Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is essential a representation of your ‘perfect’ customer, the ideal customer you want to attract based on research into similar groups of prospects and data about your existing client base. The buyer persona model helps you define similar qualities these individuals have which you market to. The buyer persona can be as complex as necessary, including simplistic data such as age and location to more in depth analysis such as income and occupation.

How To Determine Your Buyer Persona?

Create a customer survey to send out to current customers on your email list to gather information such as their role, business type, business size etc. You could also add a pop up survey of 3-5 questions on your website that new visitors can fill in so you can find out whether your marketing is bringing the right people to your website!
Add optional fields to your contact and registration forms to find out more about the users who sign up for your newsletter, e-guides and other marketing material.
Utilise your social media platforms and analyse what types of people interact with your posts and click through to your website.
If you have a blog on your website (Read why you should be blogging for business here) that has the comment section enabled, see who’s commenting on your articles and the discussions going on between users – is it relevant?

Why Do I Need To Know My Buyer Persona?

Give Them What They Want

In order to stay ahead of competitors, stay relevant in an ever growing economy and continue to earn profit you need to give the people what they want. There’s no point offering products and services that people aren’t looking for and don’t need, your products and services need to resolve questions that your buyer persona want otherwise you’re marketing to everyone which isn’t best practise. By understanding who you’re marketing to, you can see what topics engage them and which products/services they interact with the most.

Unify Your Social Media Strategy

If you don’t know your target audience, social media can feel a lot like shouting into the void. Throwing subpar content into the hustle and bustle of Twitter will rarely result in a lead if you don’t know who your followers. Experimenting with social media and seeing which posts, personas and content types they interact with most will help you understand how to market and sell to them.

Link Building Outreach

Once you understand your buyer persona, this can make link building outreach a whole lot easier. Understanding your target audience means understanding what they interested in and what they like to read, with this information you can find sites that would naturally be of interest to your buyer persona and ensure you’re featured there!