HOW TO CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS.
Table of Contents
What Are Buyer Personas?
What Are Negative Personas?
How Can You Use Personas?
How Do You Create Personas?
Templates to get you started
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WHAT ARE
BUYER PERSONAS?
Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.
WHAT ARE
BUYER PERSONAS?
The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)
WHAT ARE
BUYER PERSONAS?
WHAT ARE
NEGATIVE PERSONAS
Whereas a buyer persona is a representation of an ideal customer, a negative -- or “exclusionary” -- persona is a representation of who you don’t want as a customer.
WHAT ARE
NEGATIVE PERSONAS?
This could include, for example, professionals who are too advanced for your product or service, students who are only engaging with your content for research/knowledge, or potential customers who are just too expensive to acquire (because of a low average sale price, their propensity to churn, or their unlikeliness to purchase again from your company.)
WHAT ARE
NEGATIVE PERSONAS?
HOW CAN YOU
USE BUYER
PERSONAS
HOW CAN YOU
USE PERSONAS?
At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize or target your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, you can segment by buyer persona and tailor your messaging according to what you know about those different personas.
HOW CAN YOU
USE PERSONAS?
If you take the time to create negative personas, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to segment out the “bad apples” from the rest of your contacts, which can help you achieve a lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-customer (and see higher sales productivity).
When combined with lifecycle stage (i.e. how far along someone is in your sales cycle), buyer personas also allow you to map out and create highly targeted content.
HOW CAN YOU
USE PERSONAS?
HOW DO YOU
CREATE BUYER
PERSONAS
Buyer personas are created through research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. That includes a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside of your contact database who might align with your target audience.
HOW DO YOU CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS?
Interview customers either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.
HOW DO YOU CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS?
Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
HOW DO YOU CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS?
On your website, use forms that capture important persona information. (For example, if your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms.)
HOW DO YOU CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS?
Take into consideration your sales team's feedback on the leads they are interacting with most. (What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?)
HOW DO YOU CREATE
BUYER PERSONAS?
START CREATING
YOUR PERSONAS
If you’re using software like HubSpot customers, you can easily create and manage your personas within the Contacts tool.
Even if you’re not, you can use the following 4-slide template to organize your persona data.
START CREATING
YOUR PERSONAS?
SECTION 1:
WHO
PERSONA NAME | SAMPLE SALLY |
Background Job? Career path? Family? | • Head of Human Resources • Worked at the same company for 10 years; worked her way up from HR associate • Married with 2 children (10 and 8) |
Demographics Male or female? Age? Income? Location? | • Skews female • Age 30 – 45 • Dual HH Income: $140,000 • Suburban |
Identifiers Demeanor? Communication preferences? | • Calm demeanor • Probably has an assistant screening calls • Asks to receive collateral mailed/printed |
SECTION 2:
WHAT
PERSONA NAME | SAMPLE SALLY |
Goals Primary goal? Secondary goal? | • Keep employees happy and turnover low • Support legal and finance teams |
Challenges Primary challenge? Secondary challenge? | • Getting everything done with a small staff • Rolling out changes to the entire company |
What can we do ...to help out persona achieve their goals? ...to help our persona overcome their challenges? | • Make it easy to manage all employee data in one place • Integrate with legal and finance team’s systems |
SECTION 3:
WHY
PERSONA NAME | SAMPLE SALLY |
Real Quotes About goals, challenges, etc. | • “It’s been difficult getting company- wide adoption of new technologies in the past.” • ”I don’t have time to train new employees on a million different databases and platforms.” • “I’ve had to deal with so many painful integrations with other departments’ databases and software.” |
Common Objections Why wouldn’t they buy your product/service? | • “I’m worried I’ll lose data transitioning to a new system. • “I don’t want to have to train the entire company on how to use a new system.” |
SECTION 4:
HOW
PERSONA NAME | SAMPLE SALLY |
Marketing Messaging How should you describe your solution to your persona? | • Integrated HR Database Management |
Elevator Pitch Sell your persona on your solution! | • We give you an intuitive database that integrates with your existing software and platforms and lifetime training to help new employees get up to speed quickly. |