Buyer persona

Do you want to create a buyer persona? On this page you'll find an explanation, a detailed step-by-step plan and a free buyer persona template that you can download right away!

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a representative description of your ideal customer, based on research. A buyer persona profile provides detailed insight into the world of your target audience.

You get to know your ideal client better, think about his/her: ambitions, motives, activities and responsibilities. But you also learn all about the needs, questions, pain points and success factors during the buyer journey (buying process).

Why a buyer persona?

In inbound marketing we have an important goal: to help the potential customer optimally during the buyer journey. The quality of content plays a crucial role in this. For this reason, buyer persona profiles are an important part of the marketing strategy.

To help optimally, content should not only be good, it should be excellent. It is therefore invaluable to know what is relevant content for the customer. What this content is about, but more importantly, what questions and problems it solves. A buyer persona survey provides this insight.

An important starting point is that customer needs change during the buying process. When needs change, information should change with them.

Therefore, our ambition is to tailor content not only to the customer's environment, but also to the stage of the buying process in which the potential customer finds himself. A buyer persona profile provides the insights to do this correctly.

Through buyer persona profile, marketers and content writers are able to:

• Think customer-centric.
• Help the customer in the best possible way.
• Align content with customer needs.
• Align content with stages in the buyer journey.
• Reach the customer through the right channels.
• Learn the criteria by which purchase decisions are made.

Buyer persona definition

Buyer persona methodology was developed by Tony Zambito. Therefore, we use his definition, translated from English:

"Buyer personas are research-based archetypal (modeled) representations of: who buyers are, what they want to achieve, what goals determine their behavior, how they think, how they buy, why they make certain buying decisions, where they buy, and at what point they make a purchase."

Quite a mouthful, in other words. The original English definition, including an enlightening explanation of it, can be found on Tony Zambito's website.

Step-by-step plan: creating a buyer persona

Do you want to create a buyer persona for your organization? Then follow these steps:

The process: how do you arrive at a buyer persona?

We start by telling you the best way to arrive at a buyer persona profile.

Start internally

If your company has been around for a while, we recommend starting internally. Put together a project group of up to six people from different disciplines. Go for the people who have the most experience with the buyer persona and choose a healthy mix of experts/consultants, marketing, sales and service.

Test assumptions with customers and leads

No matter how much experience the project group has together, it is always important to test the assumptions with the customer. For this, we recommend a qualitative form of research, namely in-depth interviews with leads and customers. This way you are able to ask what you need to know, but are also able to ask further questions to get to the heart of a problem or need.

What is also valuable about this type of research is that you find out the literal language (wording) of the customer. We recommend doing ten interviews: five with leads and five with customers.

Supplement with keyword research

Keywords research is often mistakenly linked to SEO or search engine advertising. According to research firm Forrester, 71% of all b2b purchases start with an online search. Keyword research gives you insight into this question. In addition, you will learn exactly what terminology your target audience uses.

Keyword research is a quantitative research and therefore an excellent addition to the qualitative buyer persona research (the interviews with leads and customers).

Step 1: determine the nature of the buyer persona

A buyer persona represents one specific target audience. This goes beyond: 'retail', or 'b2b companies in business services'. A b2b buying process consists of multiple influencers and decision makers. This is also known as the Decision Making Unit (DMU).

When determining the nature of the buyer persona, you make a tough choice. You determine who the most important key person in the DMU is. This is because a buyer persona profile always describes a specific role (or function) that your ideal customer is in.

This is important because the role in the organization determines the work and goals of the buyer persona, among other things. You may now be thinking: there are multiple roles within an organization that describe my ideal customer. In that case, you need not one, but several buyer personas.

Think carefully about what is realistic. After all, for each buyer persona you write separate content that is completely tailored to that person. In addition, the content should also be tailored to the different phases of the buyer journey. The quality of this content is paramount.

Our tip here is: don't take on too much. It is better to make difficult choices than to make no choices at all.

Step 2: describe the background of the buyer persona

The buyer persona's background is especially important for empathy. It brings your persona to life.

You give your buyer persona a name and you describe some personal characteristics, such as:

• Job and/or role
• Gender
• Age
• Character traits
• Family situation
• Living environment
• Income
• Hobbies

How far you go in this is up to you. Of course, not every individual customer who meets the buyer persona will have exactly these characteristics. Again, it's about bringing your ideal customer to life so that everyone in your organization forms a picture of who this person is.

Step 3: find out positive influencing factors

Everyone knows positive and negative influencing factors at work and in the buying process. The more you capitalize on these with your content, the more recognizable this content becomes to the buyer persona.

By positive influencing factors you may think of:

• Ambitions
• Goals
• Responsibilities
• Needs
• Desires

With goals, needs and desires, it is necessary to look beyond your nose. This is how you find out what the goal behind the goal is, or the need behind the need. A now famous quote from Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt illustrates this:

"The customer doesn't want a 5mm drill, they want a hole in the wall."

By this, Professor Levitt means that companies are wrongly inclined to focus on their product. However, it is much more powerful to focus on solving the customer's problem. We think that Levitt could have thought one level further, because a hole in the wall does not help the customer. He wants to hang a bookshelf or a painting! So think (and ask) until you get to the heart of the need.

Step 4: identify negative influencing factors

In addition to positive influencers, there are also negative ones. In inbound marketing, we want to avoid these negative factors as much as possible. Therefore, it is important to know what these factors are.

For negative influencing factors, you may think of:

• Pain points
• Risks
• Problems
• Obstacles
• Fears
• Frustration
• Friction

Again, the key is to get to the core. A pain point may seem superficial, but there may be a deeper fear behind this.

Step 5: map the buyer journey

As we described earlier in this article, the goal of inbound marketing is to best help potential customers through the buyer journey. The needs of the buyer persona change during this process. For example, the need in the awareness phase is very different from the need in the decision phase.

Therefore, it is important to view the buyer persona in light of the buyer journey. This means that both the positive and negative influencing factors are (can be) linked to certain phases of the buyer journey. For example, it makes sense that fears increase as someone moves toward the decision phase, because then risk also increases. For example, think of fears like:

• Am I making the right decision?
• Does this solution fit us on all counts?
• Has this solution proven itself in companies like ours?
• What will come my way after putting this solution into use?

Step 6: ask about key channels

Writing good content is one thing, but this content must also be presented to your target group at the right moment, otherwise it is useless. The buyer persona research can help you with this.

Therefore, ask about the channels the buyer persona uses. Look for answers to these questions:

• Where does he/she seek advice?
• Where does he/she get knowledge about the topic/field (important in the awareness phase).
• Where does he/she get information about products and suppliers (important in the decision phase).
• Where does he/she seek help in using the solution/product? (important in the customer phase).

Free buyer persona template

A persona must come to life in your organization. It is therefore important to elaborate the buyer persona in a visual profile. To help you with this, we offer you a free buyer persona template. Use this template to shape your buyer persona.

Lambert van Asselt,Marketing director & Partner

Golden tips

We conclude this article with some pragmatic tips on how to create your buyer persona:

Don't skip the interviews!

Imagine the following situation: you've had a number of sessions with your project group and the process of arriving at a buyer persona profile is running smoothly! Within two weeks, you've created a pretty complete profile. Everyone is enthusiastic about the result!

Then you think: this looks fine, doesn't it? Nothing more to do... Wrong! Not testing your assumptions is dangerous, no matter how much knowledge the project group has about the customer.

When you talk to your target group and ask the right questions, you are bound to come up with new -very valuable- insights. Promise!

Do the interviews in person

Of course it is possible to interview clients and leads by phone, but we advise against it. For a few quick questions, the phone is fine, but not for an in-depth interview.

The client or lead will make less time for you, and you also tend to ask for less time. In addition, you miss all the nonverbal communication. Therefore, go for in-person interviews of about an hour.

Make a buyer persona profile as visual as possible

Not everyone likes to read endless texts. Images speak louder than a thousand words. Therefore, make the buyer persona profile as visual as possible so that it encourages reading.

Always use a picture that is recognizable for the persona (pay attention to copyright!). In addition, visualize for example the buyer journey and depict it as a journey.

Don't forget to draw attention to the buyer persona

Don't leave the buyer persona profile on the shelf when it is finalized and certainly don't keep it to yourself.

Bring it to the attention of your sales and marketing colleagues, but especially to the content writers. Even if these are external!

Extra tip: print the buyer persona profile (or its summary) and hang it on the wall as a poster. This way, no one can ignore the persona anymore!

Review content based on your buyer persona

After completing the research, you do not yet know your persona by heart. Take the persona profile with you when you start writing.

Don't write yourself? Then test the content you see against the buyer persona profile. Ask yourself whether the key needs, pain points, goals, etc. of the buyer persona are highlighted in the content. Is this not the case? Then supplement the content!

Record interviews and have them transcribed

Transcribing means converting audio to text. You can do this yourself, but this is a very labor-intensive job. Few people type as fast as they talk in the interview. Transcribing is therefore a repetitive process of play and pause.

Therefore, engage someone skilled at this, or use software to convert audio to text. Its success depends in part on the quality of the recording, so don't skimp on this.

Read more about the buyer journey

Buyer personas and the buyer journey are inextricably linked. For explanations, tips and advice, read our knowledge page on the buyer journey.