How to Create Buyer Personas – with Importance & Examples

Updated on: Feb 2, 2022
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Wish to learn how to create buyer personas? Then stay tuned till the end. 

If you’re part of the digital marketing world, you may have come across the term ‘buyer persona’. Maybe you know what it is, maybe you’ve been pretending to know all this while?

If you searched for ‘ What is a buyer persona?’ on Google, then you landed up at the right place. In this article, we will explore the meaning of buyer persona in digital marketing, how best to create buyer personas, how many buyer personas should you create, types and examples of a buyer persona, and more. 

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What is a Buyer Persona? 

A buyer persona is a hypothetical or a fictional representation of your customer or a customer that you’d like to target. It is purely based on extensive market research, existing data on your current customers, and a few researched and data-backed assumptions. It helps you understand your target audience by creating a marketing persona of sorts.

It helps you to understand and relate to an audience that you want to market your products and services to. 

Types of Buyer Personas with Examples

Let’s have a look at the different types of buyer personas and buyer persona examples – 

There are 2 primary types of buyer personas – B2C and B2B personas. These customer persona examples include –

Type 1: 

In B2B, the business model is business to business, targeting other companies. The communication is targeted to the decision making management who make all the purchase decisions. The aim is to satisfy all the goals of the company. 

B2B buyer persona example – 

Name – Anant Hirani 
Age – 38
Location – New Delhi
Roles – CMO at a mid-sized FMCG company.  He is married with children.
Aspirations – His aim is to improve the overall marketing and sales strategy of the company to add value as a CMO. 
Challenges – He does not have enough time to test every strategy available and hence, the company is tech-dependent. The communication needs to be tailored such that Anant’s marketing and sales needs are satisfied and he is also given a free trial. 

Type 2:

On the other hand, a B2C buyer persona is a consumer who buys simply to satisfy their own personal needs – the communication is directly aimed to the end user.

B2C buyer persona example –

Name – Sanjana Jha
Age – 40
Location – Mumbai
Roles – A manager at a clothing store and a mother of 3 teenage children. 
Challenges – Managing a work-life balance.
Aspirations – Having more time to look after herself and feel special and relaxed. The communication can be about how the brand can help you embrace your natural beauty and also make you feel special at the end of a hectic day. 

Here’s a common sample for better understanding: 

How-To-Create-Buyer Personas-Sample

(Source: Hootsuite)

Why are Buyer Personas important? 

We’ve listed below some of the reasons why buyer personas are extremely important –

  • Identifying customer needs

Buyer personas help with identifying what a customer’s needs and wants are. By identifying what a customer is looking for. This way you can get quality leads for your product or service. You can also tailor your product or service according to the customer’s likes and preferences. 

  • Understanding Consumer buying patterns

Understanding how your buyer persona makes a certain purchase decision will help you market to them using the right marketing medium, and sending out the right message at the right time.

For example, if your buyer persona is a young professional living in an urban area, then there is a higher possibility of them shopping online, according to statistics. 

  • Consumer behaviour

Through understanding your buyer persona, you can really gain insights into how to communicate with your target audience, how to reach out to new customers, what kind of medium to use, and the type of content to use. 

For example, you cannot communicate to your LinkedIn audience the same way that you would communicate to your Instagram followers. 

  • Tailored Messaging 

Targeted content and tailored messaging will enable you to send out the right messaging to the right customer, at the right time, leading to more conversions. Through buyer personas, this is possible. 

  • Customer Segmentation  

Buyer personas can help segment your customers which works well for Email marketing. In this manner, developing content specific to segmented leads becomes easier. 

How to Create Buyer Personas: Steps 

Here’s how you can create buyer personas in 5 simple steps – 

Step 1

Research is key. Even if you think you know who your clients are, research about what you’d want your future clients to be like. You need to talk to your existing clients, client service employees, understand your competition and also keep monitoring your analytics.

You can start by creating a list of questions –

  • How old is your audience?
  • What is their gender?
  • What kind of occupation do they have?
  • Are they the final decision makers?
  • What is their role at work?
  • Do they have hobbies?
  • What is their marital status?
  • What do they do in their free time?
  • Which social media platforms do they use?
  • What is their income like?
  • Do they have children?

Step 2

While these questions will get you started, you need to then segment your buyer personas. This is a time-consuming step. 

Organize all the data that you have gathered already. Find similarities and segment the buyer personalities by industry, job titles, and age. You can also do so by segmenting where they live, what are their hobbies, etc. 

Step 3

So, you’ve done your research and segmented your target audience. The next step is to create a buyer story for your persona along with a name. 

More information is always better. The more real your buyer persona is, the more the marketing team will be able to connect with the persona and tailor their efforts accordingly. Write down their age, job roles, job titles, lifestyle, etc..

Step 4

The next step is to identify their life goals, challenges and roles. You have an idea of who your buyer is. Look at their roles at work and at home. 

Are they managers or executives? What is their family makeup? Do they have children? What are their hobbies outside of work? You need to understand from this how to create content that speaks to them. 

The next is what are their life goals and aspirations? Do they want to improve their business profitability, get a bigger house, start a family? Try and understand what their life goals are. 

Buyer challenges are important to recognize. This is where you need to look for solutions to their needs. What are the struggles of their lives and how can you contribute to making their lives easier. The more solutions you offer, the more your company will stand out from the competition. 

Step 5

Step 5 is to take action. Once you know your buyers are, you need to develop sales and marketing strategies tailored to their needs and challenges. Create content accordingly and  Test these strategies  out and use the learnings to improve your future or existing strategies. 

You can conduct a content audit of your existing content before starting out to create your strategies and optimize landing pages. Here’s how you can conduct a content audit. 

Wondering how to create buyer personas with google analytics? With Google Analytics reports, you simply need to understand behavioral data collected from various users to create buyer personas. 

Check out this short online course on Google Analytics for more. There are many buyer persona templates for free download as well. 

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FAQs

Q. What should a buyer persona include?

Usually, buyer personas are detailed descriptions that include goals, skills, attitudes, and some fictional personal details to make the persona appear realistic. 

Q. Who should create buyer personas?

More often than not, the marketing team creates buyer personas on the basis of surveys, past buying history, extensive and market research.

Q. Explain buyer persona meaning in Hindi?

The meaning of Buyer persona in Hindi is “khareedar vyaktitv”. 

Q. How to create B2B buyer personas?

Here’s how you can create B2B buyer personas – 

  • Identify best clients
  • Conduct interviews and surveys with them
  • Identify the characteristics unique to them
  • Gather this data for all clients
  • Segment the data
  • Create your B2B buyer personas

Summary

We hope that you enjoyed reading this article on how to create buyer personas. Let us know how you went about making your buyer persona in the comments below for our readers to see! 

As you can tell, creating a buyer persona is work but can help you gain valuable insights into your ideal consumer. 

If you’d like to pursue a short course in digital marketing for a holistic experience, then this online comprehensive course in digital marketing is something we recommend. 

If you wish to pursue a more professional-level course then, this MBA in Digital Marketing is the perfect choice for you. Get in touch with our team at IIDE for the right course for you. 

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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