31 business building benefits of Buyer Personas

buyer personas

By Rob Petersen, {grow} Community Member

Buyer Personas rock and I’m about to show you why.

Buyer Personas are written characterizations of the real buyers who influence or make decisions about the products, services or solutions you market. They are a tool that builds confidence in strategies to persuade buyers to choose you rather than a competitor or the status quo.

Buyer Personas are extremely useful for developing and evaluating messaging, content and offers that differentiate your brand from competitors. They are a foundation for any business that relies on customer acquisition, conversion and retention which, of course, is every business.

The best personas are created from real surveys and interviews – not from ballpark guesses, conjecture or assumptions.

To convince you it’s worthwhile, here are 31 business building benefits of Buyer Personas.

TARGETING AND POSITIONING

Gives you a target for all prospects and customers
Can’t effectively market a product or service if you don’t know who you are trying to communicate with
Positions your products as relevant and worthy of consideration
Provides valuable insights for prospecting, performing market research, targeting advertising, website design, usability testing and keywords for SEO
Gives a deeper understanding and models buying behaviors of buyers and customers
Creates higher quality lead generation
Avoids wasting time on those less of a fit

MESSAGING AND MEDIA

Gives you the information and perspective you need to make objective decisions about how to craft your marketing messages
Focuses marketing and advertising efforts
Creates compelling content and offers
Helps determine the platforms and media you use
Enables content to be created to meet the targeted needs of each profile and speaks directly to the needs of each persona.
Gives a framework to have informed discussions about who your customers are, how they behave, and what they want
Helps make better connections through a common, focused understanding of an ideal customer’s common attributes, motivations, challenges and concerns
Helps to speak to buyers and customers in their language
Helps to be smarter at interpreting the digital behavior of our buyers and customers

PURCHASE MOTIVATIONS IN THE BUYING PROCESS

Gets a grasp of your prospect’s buying behavior
Enables you to details each step in the buying process
Are the blueprint for resources required to make a purchase decision
Gives insight into how to foster interaction
Relates to understanding how buying takes place and what is their critical buying path-to-purchase
Allows you to truly tailor your marketing messages so you can get the best possible response at every touch point in the buying cycle
Puts everyone in the company on the same page with respect to messaging and communications
Won’t get the best return on your investment unless you conduct the fundamental research that tells you which customers are most likely to make a purchase and what you can say or do to increase the likelihood of a sale
Allows you to develop the most cost-effective marketing strategy based on how potential customers are most likely to act
Develops a deep awareness of their day-to-day routine, challenges, goals and other insights into the type of person they are

COMPANY ALIGNMENT

Helps the marketing team better assess their segmentation, messaging and program strategies
Aligns your sales process and communicate with prospects on a more meaningful level
Improves the quality and quantity of conversations with your customers
Are critical for the creation of any marketing content and campaigns that deliver conversations, especially for use with marketing automation tools and their industry-specific buying tracks