We marketers know that marketing based on data points alone isn’t enough to drive meaningful engagement – that’s the job of a buyer persona.
Although the demographic survey results are great, many customer behavior factors are required to create a comprehensive and detailed buyer persona.
In this article, I explain what a buyer persona is and show you how to combine different research methods to create and create detailed buyer personas. In just a few thoughtful steps, you’ll get consumer stories and profiles that represent your customer base.
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you create using audience and market research. Personas contain important information about your target customer (such as demographics, behavior, interests, challenges, etc.) and help you better reach them and meet their needs.
The strongest buyer personas are based on market research and Insights You collect information from your existing and potential customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.).
Buyer personas are unique to every company, as is their name. You may see buyer personas referred to as “customer personas,” “marketing personas,” “audience personas,” or “target personas.” Each has the same meaning but will look unique to your business.
You may only have one or two personas, or even 10+ – it all depends on your company.
What type of business needs to create buyer personas?
All types of businesses should (and will benefit from) creating buyer personas because every business needs customers to be successful.
What is a negative buyer persona?
While a buyer persona represents your ideal customer, a negative – or exclusionary – persona represents who you don’t want as a customer.
Your negative personas may include:
- Customers who are too advanced for your product or service.
- Potential customers who are simply too expensive to acquire.
- People who only engage with your content to gain knowledge.
Whatever the exclusion factor, the knowledge is valuable because it helps you narrow down your strategic execution so that your inputs contribute directly to your results.
Why are buyer personas important for your company?
Before diving into the process of buyer persona creation, I want to pause for a moment to understand the impact of well-developed buyer personas on your business (especially your marketing efforts).
1. Buyer personas help you personalize your marketing.
Personalization is the main reason your buyer personas are so important, and it’s only possible if you truly understand your audience. Customers value personalization as 96% of marketers say it increases the likelihood of buyers becoming repeat customers and 94% say it increases sales.
These statistics reflect my experience as a consumer: I am more likely to be a fan of and become repeat customers of brands that know what I like and cater to my interests. For example, a branded email informing me that a product on my wish list is on sale will most likely convert me into a loyal and appreciative customer.
2. Buyer personas influence product development.
Extensive research on your target customer will help you in your product development process. You know what your ideal customer experiences every day, which can lead to innovative improvements to your product.
Suppose I sell kitchen utensils. My buyer persona research revealed that my ideal customer lives in the South, where barbecue is common. I would probably have success developing and offering grilling tools or improving my existing offering for indoor and outdoor work.
3. Buyer personas enable optimization of demand generation, lead generation and lead nurturing content.
Buyer persona research will show you how your ideal customer wants to hear from you, which can inform your demand generation strategies.
For example, if your audience prefers SMS communication, you could respond by creating SMS lead nurturing campaigns instead of emails.
4. Buyer personas help you tailor your product’s messages to the target audience.
Completed buyer personas help you tailor your content, messaging, product development, and services to meet the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of your audience.
This ties into the personalization we mentioned earlier: if you target your audience with your marketing campaigns, you’re more likely to be effective.
In fact, marketers who provide their customers with a personalized experience are 215% more likely to say their marketing strategies are effective than those who don’t.
5. Buyer personas improve targeted marketing Strategies.
By creating detailed buyer personas, you have the opportunity to create content and messaging that truly speaks to your target audience. By delving into each persona’s preferences and behaviors, you can tailor your marketing to specific segments in a way that seems both relevant and effective.
For example, instead of sending nurturing emails to your entire database, you can segment by buyer persona and use a tool like Marketing Hubto tailor the news to what you know about each individual.
I’ve found that combining personas with lifecycle stage data works wonders for mapping and creating highly specific content. When you tailor your messaging to where your audience is in their journey, it just clicks. If you are interested in trying this out, a Content mapping template is a great resource to explore.
Buyer personas are also a great tool when targeting a niche audience. I run Breaking the Blueprint (BtB), a blog column for minority business owners and entrepreneurs, and the audience is more specific than the general HubSpot blog (Black entrepreneurs vs. entrepreneurs overall, for example).
Because the audience is unique, I conducted buyer persona surveys to learn about their specific interests, needs, and pain points to ensure the content I publish is more likely to be impactful and helpful.
Don’t forget about negative personas either. They are a crucial factor when it comes to eliminating unproductive leads. Identifying and eliminating those who are unlikely to convert – such as people engaging purely for their knowledge or those too advanced for your offering – allows you to focus on the prospects who really matter. which saves time and increases your ROI.
Types of Buyer Personas
As you develop your personas, you may be asking yourself, “What different types of buyer personas are there?” From there, adapting one to your business would be easy – right?
That’s not how it works – sorry to burst your bubble. Since every company (no matter how many competitors it has) is unique, its buyer personas are also unique.
YesThere are standard attributes that you can apply to certain age groups, for example, but these can also vary. For example, my mom’s generation mostly prefers traditional marketing tactics, but she loves Instagram Reels more than anyone I know.
There is no list of generally accepted buyer personas to choose from, nor is there a standard for the number of personas needed. If you’re new to personas, I recommend starting small. You can always evolve as you grow.
In general, companies may have the same or similar categories for their buyer personas (e.g. a marketer, an HR representative, an IT manager, etc.). However, the different personas of your company and the number of personas you need depend on your target group and what your customers have to offer.
This explains why buyer personas are so important: they are specifically crafted to help your company achieve its goals.
What’s inside persona Development?
We discussed the importance of buyer personas and the (lack of) different types. Now let’s discuss how you can develop your own.
The main component of buyer persona development is research. Once you’ve done your research, look for patterns and turn those patterns into actionable tips and strategies that you incorporate into your buyer persona.
You also assemble the team that plays a role in your process. A good place to start is by selecting one or two representatives from relevant customer teams, particularly sales and marketing.
Sales reps communicate directly with customers and gain insight into their needs, and marketing teams have data on customer behavior.
Once you have identified stakeholders, start researching and collecting your data. You then put together your personas and start using them for your marketing campaigns.
Ready to start creating your buyer personas? Let’s dive in.
How to create a buyer persona in 5 steps
High-quality buyer personas are based on concrete facts about your target audience’s interests, behavior, and demographics.
The best way to create your buyer personas is through research, surveys, and interviews – all with a mix of customers, prospects, and people outside of your contact database who match your target audience.
As I created personas for Breaking the Blueprint, I discovered helpful and practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop your personas (you can also expand your knowledge on this topic through the free website). HubSpot Academy course).
1. Research your customer.
Research is the foundation of your buyer persona. Without it, personas are based on assumptions.
The information you want to obtain from your research includes:
- Demographic information. Information like age, gender, education, location, etc. gives you a basic understanding of who you are.
- Behaviors. This includes needs, purchasing behavior, brand loyalty and decision-making processes, giving you insight into how people behave as customers, what they respond to and how they like to interact with preferred companies.
- Psychographic information. Things like lifestyle, values, and interests give you insight into all the factors that influence decisions, motivations, and behaviors.
- Goals and objectives. These show you how your product or service relates to what you want to achieve.
- Pain points and challenges. These show you what problems your persona faces, how your product or service is a solution to their needs, and how to position it as such.
- Industry/specialist information. Gather information such as job title and responsibilities, tools used, industry, and company size to get a sense of how you fit into the workplace (if applicable).
You can divide your research process into two categories: your existing customers and everyone else.
However, I would like to point out that while collecting demographic information, some people may find it easier to disclose personal information privately, others may not want to do so at all. I recommend making it optional unless it’s a core part of your buyer persona.
Existing customers
If you already have customers, they are the best place to start. If you’re creating your persona for a new company, you can scroll down to “All Others.”
You can conduct interviews (in person or otherwise) and send out surveys to find out why they are your customers. Answers help you create value propositions and sales pitches for marketing materials that directly speak to your audience’s interests.
Your historical business data and analytics also provide a wealth of information about your current customers’ purchase history, touchpoints, preferred channels, etc. You can also:
- Check yours Website traffic analysis to discover useful information about your existing audience, e.g. B. Demographics, which pages attract the most visitors and why, and which marketing campaigns generate the most traffic.
- Consider your sales team’s feedback on the leads they interact with most often. What generalizations can you make about the different types of customers you serve best?
- Analyze customer feedback and support requests.
When having direct conversations, I find it helpful to include descriptive keywords and behaviors that you notice. This can help your team identify specific personas when speaking to prospects.
All other
Everyone else includes existing leads, prospects, people who have never heard of you, and even those who are negative buyer personas.
I recommend researching these groups second (unless you’re a new business) because you’ll already have an idea of what your ideal customer looks like based on the information you’ve gathered about your existing customers. You focus more on who you talk to and where you look for people to talk to.
Your research on everyone else can include the same things you’ve used for current clients, as well as:
- Focus groups.
- Look through yours Contact database to uncover trends about how specific leads or customers find and consume your content.
- Social listening to see what people are talking about online in relation to your offering, your competitors and the industry as a whole.
- Customers who churned and left feedback explaining why.
- Create forms for use Your website to collect personal information (e.g. company size).
So how do you use the research you’ve completed to create your persona? Analyze the information.
2. Analyze the available information.
Once you’ve gone through the research process, you’ll have a lot of rich raw data about your potential and current customers. But what do you do with it?
How do you distill everything so that it’s easy for everyone to understand all the information you’ve collected?
Identify patterns and commonalities in your research. Answers to your interview questions, information submitted in lead forms, and insights from the sales team will help you understand your best fit so you can target them.
3. Build your personality.
Once you’ve done your research and found these patterns, it’s time to start building your personality.
HubSpot is free Make my persona generator, as well as ours Free downloadable persona templatescan help you organize the information you collect and share it with relevant stakeholders so everyone can develop a deep understanding of the people they target at work.
Use HubSpots’ free Make My Persona tool.
You can also use this video as teaching material:
With our template, the The first step is to enter your basic demographic information. I recommend this regardless of the template you use.
Here is an example of how you might complete Section 1 Your template for one of your personas:
Download HubSpot’s free persona templates.
The second step is this Describe what you learned about your persona’s motivations. This is where you distill the information you gained by examining the “why” during your research.
What keeps you awake at night? Who do they want to be? The most important thing is to tie it all together by telling people how your company can help them.
4. Help your sales team prepare for conversations with your persona.
The personas you create can be even more powerful if you include real quotes from interviews that illustrate what your audience is worried about, who they are, and what they want. This is where the buzzwords and behaviors you’ve noticed during interviews can come in handy.
You can also create a list of objections they may raise so your sales team can prepare to address them in conversations with prospects.
5. Create messages for your persona.
Tell people how to talk to your persona about your products/services. This includes the basic vocabulary you should use and a more general elevator pitch that positions your solution to fit your personality.
This allows you to ensure that everyone in your company speaks the same language when speaking to leads and customers.
Finally, be sure to give your persona a name (e.g. Finance Manager Margie, IT Ian, or Landscaper Larry) so that everyone internally refers to each persona the same way, ensuring consistency across teams.
And if you’re a HubSpot customer, you can easily add your persona Marketing Hub from Follow this step-by-step setup guide.
Your buyer personas are crucial, as is regularly reviewing and updating them when necessary. I would recommend an annual review to keep track of your audience and how their preferences are evolving.
How to find interview partners for buyer persona research
One of the most important steps in establishing your buyer persona(s) is finding people you can talk to to understand who your buyer persona is.
But how do you find these interview partners? There are a few sources I recommend tapping into.
1. Leverage your current customers.
Your existing customer base is the perfect starting point for your interviews. They have already purchased and engaged with your company and are illustrating your target person(s).
Don’t just talk to people who love your product and want to spend an hour raving about you (as good as that feels). Customers who are dissatisfied with your product demonstrate other patterns that help you develop a solid understanding of your personas.
For example, you may find that some of your less satisfied customers have larger teams and require greater collaboration functionality from your product. Or maybe they find your product too technical and difficult to use. In both cases, you will learn about your product and the challenges your customers face.
Another benefit for existing customers is that you don’t always need incentives (e.g. gift cards) as they are nice to hear. Interviews give them the opportunity to tell you about their challenges and what they think about your product. Your customers can then influence the products they use.
Involving yourself in interviews can also increase loyalty to your company. When you contact us, always make it clear that your goal is to receive feedback and that you value it.
2. Leverage your prospects.
You can also survey people who have not purchased your product and know little about your brand. Your prospects and leads are great options because you already have their contact information.
I recommend using the information you have about them (e.g. anything you’ve collected through lead generation forms or website analytics) to figure out who is a good fit for you.
Tools like Enlyft can help you create custom buyer persona profiles and match your prospects to them, making it easier for you to find the people you want to talk to.
3. Use your recommendations.
Your existing network (colleagues, existing clients, social media contacts, etc.) is a great resource for finding people who would like to interview and be featured.
You’ll likely get some high quality interviews using this method, but the volume may be lower. Referrals are especially beneficial when you’re entering new markets or starting over without leads or customers.
If you don’t know where to start, I recommend searching for people on LinkedIn who might fit your target personas, seeing who you connect with, and reaching out to them to introduce them.
4. Use third-party networks.
Third-party networks can help you recruit interviewees who are completely outside of your company. For example, UserTesting.com allows you to perform remote user testing. You just have less control over the sessions you run.
Now let’s go over some tips for recruiting interviewees once you’ve found them.
Tips for recruiting buyer persona interviewees
When engaging with potential buyer personas, here are my tips for improving response rates and conducting interviews smoothly.
- Decide how many people you want to talk to. I wish I could give a clear answer, but the number of people you need to interview to get a full personality varies. I recommend starting with at least three to five people for each persona you create and making sure it’s a mix of customers, prospects, and people who don’t know your company. If you’re at a point where you can predict what an interviewee will stick with, you probably have a good enough sample to call.
- Create your questions in advance. After the small talk, dive into your questions. You want your personal interview questions to be clarified in advance to ensure a smooth interview process. Otherwise, you risk appearing disorganized and losing attention.
- Use incentives. Incentives give people a reason to participate, especially those who have no relationship with you. A simple gift card is an easy option.
- Make it clear that this is not a sales pitch. This is especially important when you’re dealing with non-customers who are tired of being stuck in a sales conversation. Explain that you are researching and want to do this learn from them, not sell to them.
- Make it easy to say yes. Take care of everything so that the people you are talking to only have to say “yes”. Suggest times and be flexible so they can choose what works best for them.
Buyer Persona Examples
I’ll show you some examples of finished buyer personas to help you better understand what they look like.
Example of a B2B buyer persona
The image below is a B2B buyer persona for someone who works in HR. The persona paints a clear picture of the target customer’s problems and shows how the company can best meet those needs.
In this case, HR recruiting tools streamline processes, make recruiting easier and help the HR department to competently manage their entire work tasks.
Example of a B2C buyer persona
The image below is a B2C buyer persona for a music streaming service.
Based on this persona, a streaming service wants to ensure that it has a user-friendly mobile app, sends notifications about new music, and makes it easier for users to discover new music that matches their interests and share content with friends.
Create your buyer personas
By creating buyer personas, you can better understand your target customers and ensure everyone on your team knows how to best engage, support, and collaborate with your customers.
I have no doubt that you will improve your reach, increase your conversions, and increase customer loyalty when you use your personas to help you make decisions.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for completeness.