If you’re the owner of a small business or even a micro business, you might be thinking that buyer personas aren’t necessary. But the truth is, even the smallest of businesses can benefit from creating them. In this post, we’ll explain why.
But first…
What is a buyer persona?
You may have heard of buyer personas but not have a clear idea of what they are. Don’t worry – buyer personas are simply fictional representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand the wants and needs of your target market and provide insight into how best to communicate with them.
Why create buyer personas for a small business?
Even if you’re business consists of you and your dog right now, there is still great benefit in creating buyer personas. Mainly, this is because, as a small business you have limited time and BPs allow you to focus your efforts on the customers that are most likely to become loyal repeat customers. It also helps you create content, marketing strategies and products that are tailored to your ideal customer’s needs. Winning, right?
Let’s delve in a little deeper.
Gaining understanding
As a small business owner, it’s tempting to think that you don’t need to worry about things like buyer personas. After all, you probably have a pretty good handle on who your target customer is, right? Well, the truth is that even if you think you know your target customer well, there’s always more to learn.
Buyer personas help you understand your target market incredibly well, and by creating a detailed profile of your ideal customer, you’ll gain valuable insights into what motivates them, what challenges they’re facing, and what kind of language they respond to.
As you can imagine, this information is incredibly useful when it comes to crafting marketing messages that resonate with your target audience.
Helping you stand out
Persona development can be especially helpful for small businesses who are trying to stand out in a crowded market. Why? Because it gives you the opportunity to zero in on a specific segment of your target market and create content, products and services that specifically meet their needs.
For example, your buyer persona development might tell you that one of your target audience groups really cares about environmental sustainability and is willing to pay a premium for products that reflect this. Armed with this golden nugget of info, you can create sustainable products or services that appeal specifically to this segment of your target market and help differentiate you from your competition.
Targeting them more effectively with your marketing efforts
Creating buyer personas also allows you to create more targeted marketing campaigns. By understanding who your buyers are, what they want and need, you can create marketing messages and offerings that will be much more effective than generic ones. This is especially important for small businesses who may not have the resources of larger competitors.
Instead of casting a wide net and trying to appeal to everyone, you can focus your efforts on reaching the people who are most likely to buy from you. This means using the right channels or tactics, at the right time, and should result in a higher conversion rate for your efforts.
Saving you time and money
Because buyer personas help you focus your efforts on reaching the people who are most likely to buy from you, you’ll stop wasting time and money marketing to everyone. These two resources – time and money – are incredibly limited to you. It’s time to use them more wisely.
Helping you find your audience more easily
When you create buyer personas, part of the process will be to look at what media these individuals tend to consume. If you discover that one of your buyer personas also loves interior design, it’s likely that they’ll use highly visual social media channels like Pinterest and instagram so having a strategy for these channels will come in handy.
Not only that but it could help to start following some of the followers of a particular interior design profile to see if many will follow you back.
How to create buyer personas for your small business
Now that we’ve talked about why creating buyer personas is so important, let’s take a look at how to do it. The good thing to note is that creating buyer personas is relatively easy and doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Hurrah! All you need is some basic market research and a few hours to put everything together. (The support of an expert can also help but we’ll come onto that later.)
Step 1: Gather data about your current customers.
Focus on those that you’ve made happiest, perhaps they’ve given you repeat business or recommended you to others. These are the people with which your product or service fits best.
Use whatever data you have available, including notes from any interactions you’ve had with them, information from customer surveys, sales records, and social media profiles. The goal here is simply to get as much information as possible so that you can start identifying trends and patterns.
Step 2: Identify common characteristics.
Once you have all of your data gathered in one place, it’s time to start looking for trends and patterns. Are there certain demographics that are overrepresented among your existing customers? Do they share any common interests or needs? What does their buying journey look like? Answering these questions will help you start formulating your buyer persona (or personas).
Step 3: Create a detailed description of each persona.
Once you’ve identified some of the common characteristics among your existing customers, it’s time to start fleshing out your persona (or personas). Give each persona a name and include as many details as possible in their description. The more specific you can be, the better. Remember, a persona is not an actual person but rather a composite of many different people who share similar characteristics. As you’re creating each persona, be sure to keep their needs and goals in mind so that you can develop targeted marketing messages later on down the road. And don’t forget to include information about what motivates each persona too!
Once you have your finished product, don’t just file it away and forget about it—make sure to keep it somewhere accessible so that you can reference it when needed. And don’t forget to update your personas on a regular basis as your target market evolves over time!
To help you, we’ve created a course to build the buyer personas of your most valuable customers.
Once these steps have been completed, you’re ready to start planning your marketing approach!
In conclusion, by taking the time to create one or more buyer personas for your small business, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are focused on reaching the right people with the right message. While it may seem like a lot of work upfront, the time and effort you put into creating detailed buyer personas will pay off in spades when it comes to executing your marketing strategy.
Need a little help? Get in touch with Upmarketry and we’ll have you set up in no time.
