What’s A Buyer Persona? – and How to Find Yours (With Free Template)

Last month, we walked you through how to discover your target market. However, when it comes to identifying your customers, that’s just scratching the surface. If you’re ready to dive even deeper into market research, get ready for Level 2: identifying your buyer personas.  

What is a buyer persona? 

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. What makes it different than your target market is that it takes the process one step further, getting even more specific about what individual people are buying from you. To better understand this concept, let’s look at the example target market from last month’s blog.  

Our sample target market for a lawn and landscaping home services franchise was homeowners between the ages of 35 – 55 who live in the suburbs. We determined that they own a lawn, and they need help maintaining it. We also assumed that their pain point was little time to mow and weed, and they have the disposable income to afford lawn services.  

This is a great start to find buyers in a certain neighborhood, but even though you wish it were true, not every house on the street is going to purchase your services. How come? What makes one person buy lawn care from you and another person pass? To answer that question, what can you potentially discover about your buyer that makes them an ideal customer? This is the beginning of building a buyer persona.  

How do I create a buyer persona? 

The first step in creating a buyer persona is taking a close look at your current customers to gather insights. Choose one and figure out how they found your company. Was it through a referral or an online search? Interview them or read their review of your company to find out what they liked about their experience. Keep gathering information from different customers until you can determine who the typical customer is for your business and what they are like.  

What if you’re not sure where to start?  Use a template. The template will help you lay out your buyer’s basic demographic information, motivations, and goals. There are many templates available online that are organized in different ways, or you can use the buyer persona template we’ve created for you at the bottom of this blog.  

Closing Tips  

1. Once you’ve created your first buyer persona, give them a name, such as Lawn Care Larry. This helps you think of your buyer as a real person and bring them into consideration when you’re developing your marketing strategy. 

2. When you’re doing your research, you will most likely realize you have more than one type of customer with different buyer journeys. Just make another buyer persona! Lawn Care Larry, meet Landscaping Louise.  

3. As you use your new buyer personas in your marketing strategy, you may realize that part of the persona needs tweaking. That’s okay. Your first attempt at a persona is just a starting point, and you can make them more accurate as you use them.   

4. Need help figuring out how to market to your buyer personas? Let us help. Xpressdocs has the expertise in direct mail fulfillment and marketing automation to make reaching out to your customers a breeze.