Creating a Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is "a semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer based on data, interviews, and some educated guesses," according to HubSpot. I first learned about selling personas through my Personal Selling and Sales Management class where we were introduced to the importance of buyer personas to the entire team, not only marketing. Having a unified buyer persona across all departments (i.e. marketing, sales, service teams, etc.) will allow your company to "guide your marketing campaigns, your sales conversations, and your services activities, your customers will enjoy a seamless end-to-end experience, and your internal teams will enjoy the benefits of being well aligned with each other" (HubSpot).

The key to buyer personas is getting into the mindset of your potential costumers.

Although you can create multiple buyer personas for your company, you will have a greater impact by concentrating all of your efforts into one buyer persona. It is a similar concept when choosing a target market. Even if there are several segments your company can tap into, having one or two target markets will help you achieve better results. But how do you create a buyer persona? HubSpot has some resources you might find useful to create your own buyer persona.

Who should create your persona?
The common misconception is that the marketing team should be the one in charge of creating a marketing persona for any given company. However, this is not something that should be left alone to one particular team. In fact, it is best to get as many different perspectives within your company as possible, simply because other departments might be better able to assess customer needs that concern their respective departments.

How to create your persona?
To create a buyer persona, you must first (1) define the information that should be included, and (2) identify the best sources for that information. The first step is to know the goal of your company, understand what problem your company means to solve for its customers. Categorize the types of customers that are satisfied with your product and what it takes from your service team to achieve that satisfaction. The next step is to create a buyer persona is to start understanding who they are. Each department and team will want and need to know the different characteristics of the buyer persona that your company is creating. Below are just two examples.

The marketing team will be interested to know how this persona phrases their searches on Google, where they generally go to for help with their problems, the channels of communication do they prefer, and general demographic information.

The sales team will want to know the different qualities of the buyer persona than the marketing team. They will ask questions such as the priority of solving the problem, what types of goals this problem is preventing them from achieving, what role this persona has in the purchasing decision, and how their view your product's price point.

Once the information that should be included in your buyer persona has been identified, the next step is to identify the best sources for that information. The three main sources are historical data, customer interviews, and making educated guesses. Most of the answers from your original inquiry should be answered from data that you already have. Talking to actual customers is important to make sure your interpretation of the data actually matches your customer's real point of views. HubSpot recommends interviewing about 15 people per buyer persona. If by the end of this process there are still questions that have not been answered by historical data and customer interviews, educated guesses from your customer-facing teams (people experienced in their field) can help fill in these holes.

Ways your persona can be used? 

• Marketing - use to create and position content
• Sales - use as a benchmark
• Services - use to guide efforts to provide customers with the best possible experience using your product

Other resources:
https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona?_ga=2.47441575.1469167555.1553487211-956044691.1550074383
https://marketinginsidergroup.com/demand-generation/what-to-include-in-a-buyer-persona-infographic/