Who is your buyer persona? How to enter the selection process

Apart from the fact that this knowledge can also be helpful in product development and sales, it is particularly crucial for inbound marketing. Because if you know how your target customers think and how they behave when searching for offers like yours, then you can reach them much better - or your customers can find you much better.

As you have probably already seen from the questions in the first paragraph, it is no longer enough just to know the age, living situation and income of a potential customer. You need to go much deeper than categorising target groups. Why is that?

 

Because as consumers today, we first consult the Internet before we turn to an order form, a telephone service employee or even a sales employee face-to-face. So we go online to find out what the best source of information is, what our desired product can or should be able to do for us and what else the company might offer us.

 

So how do you get interested parties to your website and how do you get into their circle of options?

Buyer personas offer deep insights and facilitate inbound marketing

Buyer personas are fictitious people who represent the perfect buyer. The familiar target group then consists, so to speak, of people who have the same pattern as the buyer persona. You don't just make them up as you go along, otherwise you will be guided too much by associations and what you believe.

 

 

Since 2010, Adele Revella has been a pioneer in the field of buyer personas with her Buyer Persona Institute. In her masterclass, she explains how you can gain the best insights into your persona. The most important thing is to conduct interviews with your customers, ideally with two different groups.

1. fresh customers

The best time for you to find out why a customer chose you and how they went about it is when the memory of the purchase process is still very fresh. Ideally, you should establish a process in your company whereby you conduct an interview with the same customer after every new acquisition.

 

If you are just starting to work with a buyer persona, you can of course also conduct interviews with existing customers. You should just be aware that you may not receive a satisfactory answer to all questions.

 

2. people who did not buy from you after all

It may sound strange at first, but it's a good way to find out where your communication (or perhaps even your offer) is still lacking. As mentioned above, the insights can also be helpful for product development and/or sales.

 

And ultimately, you can develop new communication channels that also appeal to these people and eliminate the "shortcomings" so that these people also become your customers.

Five Rings of Insights

Adele Revella does not provide a catalogue of questions for conversations with your customers and non-customers. Rather, it is important that you ask open questions to give your counterpart enough space to answer, so to speak, and to find out as much as possible in this way.

 

During the interview, you should cover five topic categories so that you can create one or more buyer personas when summarising the information. However, in order to create a detailed buyer persona, you should already know all private information such as age, values, hobbies, etc. in advance.

1. priority initiatives

As the name suggests, in the first part of the interview you ask what led the interviewee to look for a new solution.

 

2. success factors

The second part is about finding out what the customer wants from the product, service or service, i.e. what results they expect. These can be rational and logical as well as emotional.

 

3 Perceived barriers

All options are analysed during the online research. You need to find out what barriers there might be that cause the buyer persona to decide against you.

 

4 The Buyer's Journey

In the course of the selection process, your persona's criteria will certainly change at one time or another. Perhaps because additional requirements are communicated from above or by the colleague. Perhaps because the project takes a slightly different course. Either way, you need to know the criteria at each "stage" of the process and therefore ask for them individually.

 

5 Decision Criteria

Finally, you need to have in front of you exactly which sources your buyer persona uses in their buyer journey and why they decide in your favour (or not).