The buyer persona. You’ve heard of it, you know it’s important, and if you’ve taken the time to thoroughly research your customers and build out a kickass persona (better yet, multiple personas), good on you.
But many brands "feel" like they know their core audience based on a broad look at who’s purchasing, without really diving into the nuances of those customers. What industries do they work in? Are they Apple or PC users? Do they watch Netflix or maybe prefer Amazon Prime?
Digging into the details of your customer base not only prepares you to better serve your customers (through content, offers, or chatbots and service), but it makes them feel more connected to your brand and products.
Imagine you’re hosting a dinner party for a few friends and their guests. You may have a sense of what kinds of foods and drinks your friends will like, but you’d certainly want to learn more about their guests. Do they have any food allergies? Is anyone vegan or staunchly against lima beans? Is a nice red wine okay or is it a hard seltzer kind of crowd? Pretty soon you’ll have a clear picture of these guests and you’ll know exactly how to curate the perfect dinner party, down to the right playlist to set the tone. Your guests will surely walk away feeling great about the experience.
For tech and SaaS brands, learning everything you can about your customers is paramount to creating that same great experience. Strong persona marketing requires resources that can personify and bring to life a fictional version of your customer for your entire team to see WHO it is you’re speaking to. And let’s be honest, if all marketing and sales efforts ultimately rely on reaching the right customer at the right time, it’s worth getting it right, right?!
Buyer personas should include everything from demographics to psychographic and behavioral information, which can then be used to develop content that answers the persona's pain points. This HubSpot template demonstrates what we mean:
![How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Persona Template]](https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Screen%20Shot%202021-05-12%20at%2011.45.37%20AM.png?width=650&name=Screen%20Shot%202021-05-12%20at%2011.45.37%20AM.png)
Here are some helpful articles to get you started, or if you’re feeling good about your persona and ready to take the next step, skip to the bottom. We’ve got a surprise for you.
Still wondering what is a buyer persona or where to get started with creating one? This article outlines the benefits of having a persona to guide your marketing strategies and even provides a list of starter questions to help you hone in on customer insights that matter. In addition, you’ll find some helpful tips on how to leverage your newly created persona, from product teams to marketing, sales and customer service.
Understanding your audience is not only helpful in growing your brand, it can also assure you don’t alienate your current customers in the process. This article walks through a great case study illustrating how Gap made this very mistake during a rebranding initiative. You’ll also find an outline of two different methods for creating personas — using interviews or analyzing CRM and sales data.
Developing buyer personas is important, but those personas aren’t meant to be static tools. They should be updated regularly as your business and product offerings evolve. This article offers some practical ways to continue researching your customers, from lead generation forms diving into website data to find common patterns.
The Journey Begins Here
At First Page, we believe in the power of buyer personas. In fact, it’s one of the first things we do with our tech and SaaS clients to drill down to their core audiences. If you’re feeling good about your personas and ready to take the next step, you’ll need to tie them into your buyer’s journey.
We’ve updated the “typical” buyer’s journey to map across your marketing funnels and products, including a fourth stage focused on customer growth. Download our tech and SaaS-specific buyer’s journey template here.
