Creating buyer personas for your company can feel counterintuitive, as if you are limiting your sales to a select group. But the fact of the matter is that creating buyer personas is a vital step towards success. Not everyone in the world is going to be interested in your product and by spending time, money and effort in an attempt to reach everyone, you will only be wasting valuable assets. It’s time to get organized and get serious about truly identifying and focusing on your particular potentials.
To develop helpful buyer personas, consider these 5 key points:
1.) What Your Potential Clients’ Lives Look Like
In order to develop a target audience that is going to be interested in your product, you need to understand what type of people would be in need of your product and why. Some basic information about your buyer personas could be helpful in this first step. Try to visualize what one of your potential customers does throughout his/her day and what shapes their daily lives. For example: the place they live, their age, their gender, their job, could all be indicators of their potential interest in your product. Sometimes, even having a physical picture of buyer personas can be helpful to keep your focus and also to clearly and visually communicate aspects of buyer personas to your staff.
2.) What Your Potential Clients Value
You need to gain a clear picture of what your buyer personas value in life and are seeking to achieve. Some hints about this may come from information about how much time they spend at work, their hobbies, and what determines their budgets. If your product is something that could potentially enhance these peoples’ lives, then they are the buyers you should seek to market to.
3.) Where Your Potential Clients Retrieve Information
Now spend some time thinking about where your buyer personas would be most likely to look for information. Also think about the types of sources they may trust the most to give them reliable and helpful information. Some people are apt to receive most of their information on the internet, some are influenced greatly by billboards, newspapers, magazines, etc. If you visualize the buyer personas you’ve created to be extremely relationship-oriented, then determine who they would be most likely to trust to receive information from.
4.) Why Potential Clients may not Like the Product
Even people who could be potential customers are likely to have some objections to your product. Your job is to know what those potential objections could be and how you can best turn them around or sell your product in spite of them. Some reasons for objections could be: they have had a bad experience with a similar product in the past, they don’t trust what you claims to be true, they don’t like physical features of your product or don’t enjoy the process of using the product. Arming yourself against potential dislikes can allow you to be better prepared in answering your buyer personas questions and objections with helpful, thought out information.
“Your job is to know what those potential objections could be and how you can best turn them around or sell your product in spite of them.”
5.) What Your Potential Clients Want
Everyone has different expectations when it comes to purchasing and or using certain products. Understanding what your particular buyer personas’ hopes and desires may be will make a significant impact on how you go about allowing your customers to experience the product. An example of various situations could be that your buyer personas expect to be helped all through the process or, in contrast, they could hope for a more hands off approach. If the way you expect to sell your product could turn your potential buyers away, it is important to analyze your approach and be able to deliver something that your customers want.
