Handling Buyer Personas

Historically, marketers have defined target markets with a general description. For instance, an outdoor recreation store might describe its target market as men, 25-49 years old, with household incomes of €40,000 to €60,000.

While this approach is still common, creating buyer personas has become a popular and often more effective approach to lead generation.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the typical customer within a target market. The following are specific benefits of buyer personas relative to traditional methods of defining your audience.

‍

Humanises the Target Market

Customer relationship management programmes and analytics emphasise a personalised marketing strategy. The goal is to precisely target individuals with relevant messages, even in the midst of targeting a large segment.

A buyer persona fits better with precise targeting objectives than a general audience description because it humanises your customer base.

Rather than loosely thinking about the traits of audience members, marketers and sales reps envision a real person.

Personas often include such detailed information as identifying where a buyer lives, how many kids he or she has, and what activities he or she engages in.

‍

Refined Lead Generation

A more precise perspective of your market allows for more refined lead generation. Rather than focusing on a high volume of prospects, your representatives emphasise precision in sourcing the best prospects.

Internal Results uses buyer personas to help identify the best possible prospects for our clients. Highly targeted prospects lead to better conversation rates, reduced sales cycle times, better customer retention and improved financial performance.

‍

Better Positioning

You not only attract the best possible prospects through your lead generation activities, but buyer personas enable stronger product positioning. Since you have a detailed definition of the prototypical customer for a solution, it is easier to consider his needs and deep pain points.

When you have a clear understanding of the problem a prospect faces, it is simpler to sell on the benefits that matter. Keep your message concise and on point to address the remedies that get a buyer excited.

The stronger your positioning, the greater your ability to sell higher-value solutions as well.

‍

Process Consistency

With buyer personas, you also mitigate the potential for haphazard selling processes.

Each marketing and sales rep has the same profile of the target customer. Consistent lead generation processes lead to efficient results and the most effective presentation of your solutions to the marketplace.

Buyer personas allow a brand ambassador like Internal Results to work closely with your sales team on lead generation and nurturing strategies.

Conclusion

The benefits of buyer personas are powerful, which is why there has been a huge shift to implementing them in the last few years.

You get a much more human perspective of your targeted customer and enable your team to implement lead generation activities that align precisely targeted prospects with high-impact product positioning.

You may also want to read “How to Align Your Content Strategy With Your Buyers”