The most effective way to enhance revenue generation for any brand is to understand the needs of the target audience and work on creating a buyer persona. Every brand now focuses on product development or boosting content marketing by enhancing customer satisfaction. Any company that wishes to stand firm in this growing competition understands the value of a good customer experience. A positive customer experience builds a strong relationship between the brand and the audience which is extremely necessary to run a long-term business and retain the customers. If you are consistently providing customer satisfaction, then sustaining in the market becomes substantially high, but to be consistent, you have to identify your target audience first. A good business model will only be successful when the business understands which segment of people will help in generating maximum revenue and how to serve their needs to provide optimum customer satisfaction.
Identifying the target audience and working on content marketing and product development requires extensive market research. Having a fictional yet clear image of the customers is necessary for a business to run and make an impact on its segmented market. Gathering good information about the present and future customers will help your brand develop efficient marketing strategies that will lead to profit generation.
“Buyer persona” is the fictional representation of the possible buyers, it is framed through in-depth market research. There is diversity in customers buying a similar product - they can be different according to their age, race, location, income, etc. A buyer persona not only depicts the demographics of segmented customers or the focus group but it reveals much more, i.e., their buying habits, which digital medium they use the most, what they value the most in a brand, and their preference between online and offline buying, etc. Therefore a brand has to deal with multiple segments of buyers who are different from each other and they need to be handled in distinct ways to make sure their needs are fulfilled in a manner that is intensively suitable to them.
How to create buyer persona
A lot of effort is required to create buyer persona, from market research to highlighting demographics and gathering information about the present and future customers and much more. There are many factors responsible and necessary to take into account when creating multiple buyer personas for your brand as you don’t want to miss out on any segment of probable buyers. It is an essential process that helps in framing the characteristics of the fictional buyers that benefit the market researchers to shape the product development.
• Understanding the demographics - One of the most critical factors in framing the characteristics of the fictional buyer is understanding the demographics, i.e., their age, religion, ethnicity, geographical location, etc. It helps the marketers formulate the attributes of the future buyers or prospects they are going to target through product marketing. It enables the marketing companies to decode common traits of the target audience and estimate their response to the products they will be offered. Earlier, extracting data from the audience was a hectic task, but with the increased online presence and digital marketing, it has become comparatively more straightforward, especially with the help of social media marketing. Everyone is on social media nowadays because it is very easily accessible. Thus digital marketers specifically prefer social media marketing to seek out data from the target audience and understand their buying patterns.
• Knowledge of the customers - Knowledge of the customer is more than just understanding the demographics. It includes comprehensive learning about your focus group as they are the backbone in fulfilling the expected results for the businesses. Understanding the customers' needs, what they want in a product, what they like and dislike, what are their desires and aspirations etc. Even the smallest of details related to the focus group should be considered as it will enable your brand to provide a good customer experience. Thinking from the customer's point of view helps build a strong relationship between the business and the customer and acts as a pillar of strength in forming a powerful B2C connection. Your business will survive long-term if customer satisfaction is one of your priorities.
• Creating multiple buyer personas - Understanding the demographics and knowledge of the customers or the prospects is more than helpful in creating a buyer persona. A single buyer persona will deal with a specific segment of the target audience or focus group, but businesses have a diverse customer base and dealing with different segments of crowds requires multiple buyer personas. Suppose your company sells protein powder, and one buyer persona is dedicated to dealing with youth aged 18-30 who are regular gym-goers. Even if the gym-goer's youth buys a large portion of your product, another substantial percentage is taken by the old age people who are protein deficient, and also by the growing teenagers. Therefore creating multiple buyer personas to target different focus groups become significant for your brand to achieve its full potential.
Benefits of creating buyer persona
There are numerous benefits associated with why to create a buyer persona. Best companies recognize the value of framing the characteristics of their fictional buyer to improve product development and increase sales. If customer satisfaction is frequently achieved, then the company's future, in the long run, is very much secured.
• Helps in product development - When your product is shaped considering customer satisfaction, it automatically becomes one of their most preferred choices, and it also elevates the growth of your business.
A buyer persona helps in many ways to run a successful business and one of them is helping in product development. When customers’ needs and wants are understood by the brand, applying this knowledge to improve the customer experience through the products becomes easy. The process of development of the product gets aligned to enhancing customer satisfaction. The product becomes more efficient and effective for the users to use and the frequency of its consumption increases with the increase in new buyers.
• Personalized message for multiple focus groups - Every business deals with multiple segments of customers whose needs and wants mostly differ from each other. Some may use the same product for a different purpose and others might have a distinct objective for using it. Your brand needs to consider the satisfaction of all these different segments of probable buyers, but using the same message to promote the product to every future customer won't work effectively. That is where buyer personas help frame personalized messages for different focus groups. Framing a personalized message is necessary to build trust in the eyes of focus groups and convert them into customers from just being a prospect. That becomes possible when the message directly targets their desires associated with a product. It provides a sense of self-worth, boosting their morale, which triggers an unconscious push to get connected to your brand or to complete a transaction.
For e.g., your protein powder product has a message for the targeted youth buyers: "build your muscle for a lifelong hustle." For the growing teens, the message is personalized for their mothers as they are the decision-makers and the message will be: "a strong foundation creates extraordinary achievers." In both cases, the objective is to sell the product with an emotional connection that is very useful in achieving the call-to-action for your brand.
So, the buyer persona plays a key role in building a connection with the focus groups and promoting sales for your brand. Connecting with the target audience is very important as the best kind of promotion is mouth publicity which is possible when customer experience and satisfaction are well taken care of.
• Determining the promotion medium - There are numerous offline and online marketing mediums that marketers use to promote and advertise their goods and services. The selection of a medium to promote the product is a crucial choice as the likability of any specific medium differs from individual to individual. Market research helps create buyer personas by understanding the target audience’s demographic, their buying habits, their likability to any product, and the medium they are most active on, which ultimately helps choose a promotion medium. It makes it easy for your brand to extend its reach to promote the product and expand the business. Everything gets synchronized and turns in favor of your business when all the essential aspects are considered. The buyer persona is so effective that you get the optimum idea about where to promote or advertise the product. It can be through social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, traditional marketing, etc.
The right medium choice will benefit your brand's overall marketing plan and bring out maximum positive results because the product is offered to the suitable focus groups using their favorable medium.
• Increases the creativity of the brand - The creativity of the brand improves and increases when the target audiences are divided into smaller focus groups. Buyer personas give insight into multiple fictional buyers groups and provide the knowledge of their diversity that helps in dedicating efforts to create the marketing strategy separately for every group. It is important to handle different personas of people with a unique perspective to fulfill their desires with a brilliant message related to the product and that is where the buyer personas become extremely helpful. It also helps your business to attract every segment of people that it is targeting because you have attached a creative touch to your personalized message.
Buyer persona in digital marketing
Creating a buyer persona is equally impactful in every form of marketing. Knowledge of probable buyers' characteristics helps every brand determine its marketing strategy. The customer's digital presence makes it easy for the businesses to collect data from the target audiences and apply it in their SEO marketing, PPC marketing, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, etc. The transfer of information is so quick online that it helps the digital marketing companies quickly assess the details and create buyer personas to plan their digital marketing strategies accordingly.
• SEO marketing - In SEO marketing, the buyer persona helps the online marketing company analyze, research, and choose keywords that may or may not be directly related to your product but are relevant to the buyer’s query.
• PPC marketing - Knowing the preferences and characteristics of the buyers gives an essential insight on when to display your PPC ads because you know about the time they are most active and which online platform they use the most.
• Content marketing - Understanding the likes and dislikes of the personas makes it easy to produce likable content because you have already deciphered their collective personalities.
• Email marketing - Emails are probably the least used platform compared to other forms of digital marketing; however, if targeted with extensive market research, it will probably give the highest rate of conversions. Using buyer persona in email marketing provides the most filtered and interested customers.
• Social media marketing - The most used digital media platform holds immense opportunity and lets the brands understand the target audience very closely. The profile of the audience provides all the necessary details that are important in creating a very effective buyer persona and getting good results in the social media marketing strategy.
Conclusion
The buyer persona is one of the most underused marketing tools, but its worth in making any business victorious is enormous. Whether online or offline marketing, a buyer persona is equally effective for all kinds of marketing strategies. Knowing the target audience is one of the most critical aspects of framing a successful result-oriented plan and achieving business goals. A good customer experience and satisfaction are delivered when your business has researched its target audiences to understand their preferences better. Working according to the consumer's needs is what a successful and blooming company does, and buyer personas are useful in executing plans or making strategies related to the prospects' requirements.
References:
• SEO for beginners: How to improve SEO user experience
• What is target audience and how to find them