In marketing, a buyer persona is a representation of an individual. This representation is based on a business’ research on what constitutes an ideal customer. A buyer persona is also referred to as marketing personas and emotional personas.

However, there are always more than one buyer personas – after all, you cannot expect identical purchasing behaviour from all of your users. Hence, companies usually create several buyer personas that target each category of their consumers. For instance, if you manage a business that sells clothes for females, then you can design buyer personas for stay-at-home mums, young professional women, or married professional women with children. If you use the same buyer persona for them, it can’t leave a lasting impression as they fail to “connect”.

How to Build Buyer Personas?

Sometimes, businesses make the perennial mistake in believing that they are well aware of what their target audience wants and design buyer personas that are devoid of any actual research or study.

An improved strategy is accumulating maximum data and using it to develop your buyer personas. Now, the question arises, how to gather this data? For this purpose, you may have to put multiple departments at work.

One of the solutions for data collection is relying on surveys. Distribute online and paper-based surveys to your past and current customer base. For instance, you can use email marketing with tools like MailChimp to send out emails. Since surveys show data directly from the consumers to whom you are marketing your products/services, therefore they are mighty effective.

You can also compile the existing data in your data sources like databases and paper-based documents. Such data can include geographic locations, customer age, and item preferences. Moreover, by promising freebies like free seminars or free e-books, you can develop a landing page in which users can fill up survey forms to provide you with relevant information.

Creating a Content Plan to Target Personas

When you have created at least four or five personas, you have to assess which content can attract them the most. For instance, you can evaluate what are the common issues that are plaguing your customers and how your business can resolve those issues.

For instance, in the example mentioned above of a clothing company, you can focus on a buyer persona that is referred to as Charlotte. Charlotte has just turned up 26, she is unmarried, and resides in a metropolitan like London. According to your persona, Charlotte is currently employed with a professional career in which business attire is mandatory. It is possible that Charlotte does not have enough budget to create the “professional” look that she aspires to achieve.

Using this buyer persona information, you can develop a content plan that revolves around her specific issues, particularly those which she regularly searches for. Afterwards, you can ask your marketing department to generate video or blog posts that target all the “Charlottes”.