Anyone who has had anything to do with marketing recently will know the term “buyer personas”. In fact, it’s one of the most commonly heard buzzwords today. Yet, this is a term that’s often casually used, as if everybody knows precisely what it means.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Many organizations are unaware of what a buyer persona is, much less why they are so important.
If you aren’t sure what a buyer persona is or why it works, this article will offer further explanation.
Buyer Personas – What Are They?
The term “buyer personas” is used to describe research-based profiles which depict target customers. A buyer persona will describe who an ideal customer is. It will outline what they do, the challenges they’re facing and the way in which they make their decisions.
Financial institutions have several different buyer personas. Each one will have their own criteria for evaluating the product in question. Therefore, different strategies will be needed to address your unique needs.
Sometimes, buyer personas are known as marketing profiles or customer personas. Yet, no matter which term you choose to use, their purpose remains the same. Essentially, buyer personas will help an FI to understand its customers and empathize with them. This allows them to do the best possible job of serving them while also acquiring more customers.
Why Is Having A Buyer Persona So Important?
It’s important to have buyer personas to ensure all activities are properly tailored to the needs of the targeted customer. The statistics below show just how effective creating buyer personas can be for your FI.
When customers choose a bank or credit union, they naturally turn to one that they trust and know. One of the best ways to build up that trust is by showing genuine concern and understanding for your customers. This means that a key shift must be made in how your institution presents itself.
Potential customers must know that you understand them. This is possible by addressing their needs or pain points. It’s only then that they will likely explore what you’ve got to offer them.
By creating relevant buyer personas then using them continually to guide your organization’s activities, you remain centered on customer needs.
By creating an accurate set of buyer personas, your financial institution can produce some impressive results. By understanding potential customers, it’s possible to:
- Make the money spent on marketing go further
- Create engaging, effective and interesting marketing campaigns
- Position your services and products to solve definite problems for particular audiences
- Attract more ideal customers while building greater brand loyalty
- Boost your ROI
- Drive conversions and boost revenue
How Do You Use Buyer Personas?
Simply building buyer personas can be very illuminating. In order to create a persona, the first step is to ask in-depth questions about the ideal customer. Just this exercise helps you to spot things that you may have not noticed before.
An immediate benefit of having buyer personas is that they help in gaining greater customer insights. Those personas can then be used as a guide to direct activities.
The chart above shows the different departments of an organization that can benefit from using buyer personas.
- The product development department can use buyer personas to help identify changes to offerings based on what customers need most.
- The marketing department can utilize buyer personas in order to build more effective strategies. They help in focusing on keyword research and can be used as a reference point when creating copy.
- The sales team can use buyer personas to build up a better rapport with their potential customers.
- The customer service team can use buyer personas to serve customers better. By knowing the problems customers want to solve they can show empathy with customers.
How Are Buyer Personas Created?
A buyer persona must incorporate both external and internal research. Several personas may be needed to represent different customer types.
Select a target customer then create a persona for them based on existing knowledge. Next, draw up a plan for enhancing that person with even more research. It’s best to start by creating questions which can then be used for interviewing team members. Although there isn’t a single set of questions for every organization, some common questions are found below:
Once you’ve carried out your research, it’s time to create your initial buyer persona. Remember, though, that it should never be a static document. It should evolve with the knowledge you obtain about customers. Therefore, integrating new insights over time is important.
Here are some practical tips for creating your buyer personas:
- Check your database of contacts and uncover trends about your customer types.
- When you’re creating forms on your FI’s website, use fields to capture key persona details.
- Listen to feedback from the sales team about the leads they interact with.
- Interview prospects and customers to find out more about what they appreciate about your services and products.
Once you’ve completed this research process, you will have raw data about current and potential customers. Next, you can use that research to spot commonalities and patterns to create buyer personas.
A Step By Step Guide To Creating Buyer Personas
- First fill in simple demographic information for your buyer persona. Ask questions in person, through surveys or over the telephone to obtain those demographics.
- Share what has been learned about what motivates the buyer. Tie the information together by working out how your institution can assist them.
- Help the sales team to prepare for future conversations with this buyer persona. Help them to learn who the persona is, what worries them, and what they’re looking for.
- Tell your teams how they can talk about services and products with this persona. Include the vernacular to resonate specifically with them.
- Give each persona their own name. This will allow everybody internally to refer to each of the personas in the same way.
The Information To Be Included In Buyer Personas
There are several key pieces of information to be included in buyer personas. These include:
- A name for easier identification across your institution
- Demographics – these include gender and age, income level, location, family status and education level.
- Professional status including job level and title and the industry they work in.
- Psychographics – these include values, goals and standpoints as well as beliefs
- Challenges and pain points – the major struggles the customer faces and the obstacles in their way
- Information sources and influences – who the buyer listens to and trusts and where they go looking for solutions. These details should include favorite media, preferred websites, social networks and blogs. It should also include thought leaders and influences they trust.
- Purchasing process – these insights amplify the journey of the buyer. They outline the role of the persona in the decision-making process of purchasing.
How To Research Buyer Personas
Conducting interviews is essential if you’re going to work out what is driving your target audience. These interviewees can be found in several ways:
- Current customers – your organization’s existing customers represent the ideal starting point. Interview both happy customers and those who are less satisfied with your products and services.
- Prospects – interview people who know little about your organization’s brand and who haven’t used your services or products. Current leads and prospects are useful for this since your organization already has their contact details.
- 3rd Party Networks – you can recruit some interviewees from 3rd party networks like UserTesting.com and Craigslist.
What Are Negative Buyer Personas?
You may think only of buyer personas as being your organization’s ideal customers. Yet, it’s also possible to create negative buyer personas. These are representations of people you’d rather avoid having as customers. For example, these customers may be too costly to acquire or those who only engage with content for research purposes.
Using Buyer Personas For Marketing Purposes
At the basic level, creating buyer personas enables content to be created to appeal to the target market. Not only that, but it allows for more personalized marketing for each segment of the target audience.
The same emails don’t need to be sent to everybody in the organization’s database. Instead, the database can be segmented by different buyer personas. The messaging can then be tailored to what is known about each persona.
Also, if you’ve created negative buyer personas, it’s also possible to weed out those individuals from the list of contacts. This reduces the cost-per-customer and cost-per-lead for even greater productivity.
You can implement each buyer persona across all your organization’s marketing campaigns in several ways:
- Brand your marketing and website to suit the preferences of your customer personas.
- Analyze past approaches to marketing and use your buyer personas to create a fresh roadmap to move forward. Tailoring future campaigns will be easier now since you’re aware of who you’re talking to.
- Reviewing, refining and refreshing your strategy by monitoring its progress with analytical tools.
With carefully drawn up buyer personas, it’s possible to create a more personalized brand experience. If your institution knows as much as possible about potential customers’ pain points they can create targeted messaging. Marketers can also create more tailored offerings and a more efficient delivery of content.
Producing tailored and efficient content isn’t the only marketing benefit of creating buyer personas. They are also important in terms of reach and distribution. Buyer persona profiles outline where specific customers turn for information and advice. This means it’s possible to identify high-value leads. It’s also possible to determine which platforms and channels to target with focused content.
What Different Buyer Personas Are There?
There is no specific set of buyer personas that are universally recognized. Rather, every organization is unique. Therefore, buyer personas need to be unique too. This is why you need to identify and create different buyer personas that are tailored to your organization’s needs.
Many financial institutions have similar categories, yet the number and type of personas your organization requires must be tailored to your specific target audience.
Buyer Personas Make Attracting And Retaining Customers Easier
Knowing who your ideal customers are, is key to any successful marketing strategy. Defining buyer personas is an essential initial step towards improving products and services.
It’s also vital for making valid marketing investments and decisions. Rather than guessing who your ideal customers may be, a data-driven approach should be taken.
The detailed customer persona means more targeted, successful and strategic marketing practices can be implemented.
When you create buyer personas, you learn to understand target customers at a much deeper level.
You can use them to ensure everybody understands the best way to target them. They also have a better understanding of how to go about supporting them and working with them effectively.
As a result, your organization’s reach will improve, the number of conversions will get a boost and loyalty will increase.
If you develop a specific and well-tuned set of buyer personas it’s easier to connect and retain customers. You can connect with them and establish a positive working relationship. You’ll know which messages will resonate well with them.
You’ll also know what makes them tick and how your marketing strategies can be shaped accordingly.
It’s easy to see, then, why more institutions are beginning to understand the importance of creating clearly outlined buyer personas. Armed with this key information, they can then go about connecting more effectively with prospective and existing customers. Buyer personas turn a faceless brand into one that is engaging, approachable and personal. As a result, customers will trust you and turn to your institution to resolve their issues.