Creating Your Buyer Personas. Who is my target customer?
The first step in reaching your target audience is learning exactly who he or she is. That’s where a buyer persona comes in.
A Buyer persona
A Buyer persona is a fictional character who represents an individual customer as opposed to a target audience. It is a more refined idea of who your ideal customer is. Basically, a name, demographic details, interests, and behavioral traits. Who is she, how old, does she have any children or are they grown and out of the house? Where does she spend her time when engaging in social media?
Why are they important?
Buyer personas allow us to think in terms of what our customers think, and what motivates them. What do they search for? Where do they hang out online? buyer personas help us to speak to our potential customers where they are online and when they are online.
Let’s create one.
A fictional character who would be a customer of ours. Let’s call her Carol. She works as a nurse at her local hospital. She is married and has two teenage children who sometimes live at home. Her husband is a doctor and is not involved in the decision-making. She lives in the suburbs and is planning to remodel her kitchen before her children are off to college. Carol entertains a lot and her guests are often in the kitchen. Her husband helps out in the kitchen. She spends an average of 1 ½ hours a day on Facebook through her phone. Carol has been researching kitchen Ideas online and has a Pinterest board of the images she has saved. She has new appliances and her budget for cabinetry and installation is between 20 and 30,000.00
Another example would be, Jim and Diane a married couple remodeling their retirement home after scaling back. They are in their mid 50’s Their children are gone out of the house and they don’t need a big kitchen but a smaller scaled-back space. Jim and Diane are both working in a professional capacity with a combined income of over 200,000 per year. They have enough savings to cover the expense of a quality custom kitchen. Their budget for their cabinetry is between 30 and $40,000.00
With a Buyer Personas, we can create a strategy.
Armed with your new buyer personas you can create a strategy for your digital marketing, organic, earned and paid content including social media. Using the buyer personas above, we can tell that Carol is online gathering ideas for her kitchen and has even created a board on Pinterest. We know to reach Carol, we should have a presence on Pinterest with some high-quality images of kitchens you have created.
In both personas, they have been researching kitchen design in general and cabinet lines specifically. They most certainly have used search engines in their quest to learn more. So ranking high in search engines organically and perhaps setting a budget for search engine marketing are important tactics.
For more information, I have included some links below to other resources for developing buyer personas
Generations-
- The Greatest Generation (1901-1924)
- The Silent Generation (1925-1945)
- The Baby Boomers Generation (1946-1964)
- Generation X (1965-1980)
- Millennials (1981-1996)Also known as Generation Y
Understanding the four Consumer Buying personas.
