What is a Buyer Persona?

The buyer persona is the key and essential figure in any process of selling products and services. They are our potential customers and therefore we must know what their needs and preferences are in order to offer them a product tailored to their needs.

This final consumer has the power to make our marketing company work; without the buyer persona nothing makes sense. To define this figure, we must establish a buyer persona template based on studies, questions, surveys and others to certain population groups of interest in our services in order to understand what they need and what we can offer to meet their requirements.

Buyer person and target

These are two different concepts that are often mistaken for each other. The target, defining various parameters such as age, gender and purchasing power, is more extensive and complicated to customize, while the buyer or target audience analyzes their needs.

Market research

To find out what potential customers want and to adapt our email marketing campaigns, we must conduct market research. This is obtained through fieldwork, surveys, interviews and data collection from the buyer persona.

Cause, pain, need…

The most important thing to define about this figure is its pain, a need, motivation and ultimately concern that arises and makes the person show interest in a service or product. Knowing this pain is key to determine what you are looking for, why, how and your final sale.

Radiography of the buyer persona

Then, once the first step has been taken, we must create an X-ray of the end customer, with a panel and profile of the person and some particular characteristics. For easier recreation of this person’s role, we can design a fictitious prototype of this person, with name, age, location, job and need.

The negatives

It is as important to know the end customer or the one interested in our products as it is to know the negative one. The latter refers to the excluded or the one who is not going to be our customer and we do not want him to be. It is advisable to define which ones are these so as to discard them, either because of price, or because they are not loyal to brands or will not be interested in this product.

Questions for our end customers

Some of the questions we can ask to discover your needs and personalize our communications have to do with your work and personal life. What is your job role? What industry do you work in?  What are your primary job responsibilities? What are your main challenges? What blogs, magazines or websites do you read? What education have you received? How do you usually buy? How do you prefer to communicate with suppliers? What is the last thing you bought?

Example of buyer persona 

There are several types and, based on this and the responses obtained, we create our buyer persona profile and example. We find the one who decides, who makes the final decision on the purchase. The  prescriber type who usually recommends a product or service, and the influencer who goes further because he recommends and determines in his opinion that a product or service is positive or negative so that others will buy it. The latter figure has grown significantly in recent years, thanks to social networks. We must collaborate with them if necessary.

As an example of a buyer persona  who decides and buys directly, we have Andrés López who is a lawyer, 43 years old, married, with children of 8 and 11 years old, lives in an urbanization on the outskirts of Madrid, usually uses social networks for work and leisure, and buys mainly online. He is interested in technology and art. To act on his interests we must put ourselves in his shoes and talk to him about technology, advocacy, kids, and comfortable homes because they are part of his life.We will be able to attract his attention to sell our products by means of contents directed to these parameters.