Buyer Persona: What it is & Why It Matters

In marketing, we talk a lot about your buyer persona (aka your ideal audience, ideal customer, or marketing persona - whatever your preferred term is). It’s one of the first questions I ask my clients during our onboarding session, and it’s something I frequently revisit when we talk about content and marketing plans.

According to Hubspot, your buyer persona “is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” Having a deep understanding of this group, allows you to appeal more authentically and personally to them. This persona is someone who represents that ideal audience and guides your marketing. The content you create should be geared specifically toward this persona - how you tap into their emotions, how you show you solve their problems, and how you relate to them. You get it because you get THEM.

This persona/audience is an essential part of your social media strategy (really entire marketing strategy). When you look at your audience a little deeper as a persona, you look at their personal challenges as well as who they are, and where they are. I always personify my clients’ audiences because we’re marketing to PEOPLE so instead of looking at it as a “group” or just “demographics” we look a little deeper and see them as a person. I say to my B2B clients that even though you might be targeting the CEO or VP of Marketing or whoever it is you’re marketing to, you’re still marketing to a PERSON and don’t forget that. It’s not the role… it’s the person in the chair.

So what questions do we need to know about our audience to help us tap into their being and marketing effectively to them?

Demographics

• How old are they?

• Where do they live?

• What is their gender?

• Are they college educated? Masters?

• Married? Children?
  

Who are they professionally?

• Income

• Industry

• Job title

• Years in the industry

Where are they hanging out online?

What channels do they use for social media? If they’re younger, they’re more likely to be on TikTok or Instagram. Doing some B2B marketing? Probably want to focus on Linkedin. Knowing who you’re marketing to helps determine WHERE to market (especially since each platform has slightly different user demographics).

What are their pain points?

If you’re marketing to someone, you are trying to solve a PROBLEM for them. What is the problem that you solve? What pain does this audience have in their everyday life - if you’re a business coach, it may be that you’re marketing to 30-something moms who want to start a business, and they hang out on Instagram, and they have a HUGE amount of imposter syndrome AND they lack time. You help them set up better systems and get a vision for their business while boosting their confidence. If you’re an insurance company say, and you sell a lot of homeowners insurance, you are probably marketing to GenX/Millennial couples who want a reasonable rate on their insurance but don’t know enough about it to feel confident in what they are buying.

To this point, you have to have a LOT of clarity on HOW you solve their problem and how your service or product solves your audience’s problem, and what your value is to them.

How to find out information about your personas?

We can ask these questions all day and think that we know, but marketers have HUNDREDS of data points to look at. You can get more info on your persona by looking at

• social media data

• Google Analytics

• Look at your competitors’ audiences

• Market research

• Your sales team

• Social Listening tools (Sprout has a fantastic social listening component, as well as Agorapulse, Hootsuite, Sprinklr, BuzzSumo, and Mention)

If you want a place to write this all done, and keep a record of your audience, I LOVE this Hubspot persona worksheet. Revisit your persona once or twice per year. Use it in your onboarding when you bring on a new team member because your persona/audience is the insight into WHO your customers are and the value you bring to them and is an essential part of your social media & comprehensive marketing strategy.

Need help? Contact me for a strategy session and we can dive deep into your audience, and what content might resonate with them!