Buyer personas help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better. This makes it easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, product development, and services to meet the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of the members of your target audience.
Different Types of Buyer Personas
While beginning work on your personas, you may ask yourself, "What are the different types of buyer personas?" From there, it'd be simple to adjust one for your business — right?
Well, that's not exactly how it works — there isn't a set list of universally-recognized buyer personas to choose from, nor is there a standard for the number of personas you need. This is because each business (no matter how many competitors they have) is unique — and for that reason, their buyer personas should be unique to them, too.
For these reasons, identifying and creating your different buyer personas can, at times, be slightly challenging. In general, companies may have the same, or similar, categories for their buyer personas. But the different personas your business has and the number of them your business requires will be tailored to who your target audience includes and what you offer your customers.
How can buyer personas be used in marketing?
At the most basic level, developing personas allows you to create content and messaging that appeals to your target audience. It also enables you to target or personalize your marketing for different segments of your audience.
For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, you can segment by buyer persona and tailor your messaging to what you know about those different personas.
Furthermore, when combined with lifecycle stage (i.e. how far along someone is in your sales cycle), buyer personas also allow you to map out and create highly targeted content.
And if you take the time to also create negative personas, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to segment out the "bad apples” from the rest of your contacts, which can help you achieve a lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-customer — and, therefore, see higher sales productivity.
Are you in the real estate or hospitality industry and have questions about buyer persona mapping? Click here to request a consultation today!
Comments