They determine the channels, the touch points, and the segmentation of your message.
The Buyer Persona is not just a buyer. It’s the whole concept of how your message should target, segment, and reach out to people.
Now, the “million-dollar question is: “How do I create my Buyer Persona Template?”
Creating a Buyer Persona Template is not as hard as it seems. It’s all about:
How to research the data.
How to transform it into useful information.
How to represent that information.
Let’s dive into it. Shaw we?
Buyer Persona Template: How to create one and how to make it the most profitable possible
You will learn how to create a Buyer Persona Template in detail. But before we dive into it, you need to understand how profitable that is.
It matters to create proper expectations to measure your results against them. If you are unable to measure it, it doesn’t exist.
How Profitable Your Business Can Become With a Buyer Persona Template
Let’s start unfolding this by reading this short quote:
“People don’t like to be sold but they love to buy.” – Jeffrey Gitomer.
Perk #1: Persuasion
Effective communication leads Buyer Personas to buy from you on their terms. That cleans up the whole awful idea of having something being sold to them.
If you lead your Persona to make a decision, that’s helpful for them. They are looking to solve a problem and they don’t have time to waste or money to spend in the wrong way.
Neither do you.
Research led by MarketingSherpa shows that targeted communication over general one leads to:
Website traffic increase by more than 200%.
Lead generation increase by more than 95%.
Sale closing increase by more than 120%.
All that without a dime spent on ads.
Perk #3: Brand advocacy
Brand advocates are the most powerful force of business growth. That’s cross-cultural, cross-industry, and cross-business size.
Brand advocates produce a wave of word-of-mouth to businesses. But that demands a great deal of value and service delivered to your audience to make it happen.
You can only produce word-of-mouth from Brand Advocates. You can only have them by reaching out to the right people – your Buyer Persona.
How profitable is that? Here are 3 statistics from Semrush:
88% of people had the highest level of trust in a brand when a friend or family member recommended it.
Word-of-mouth is behind 90% of all sales.
96% of satisfied customers return and are more likely to tell others.
How to research a Profitable Buyer Persona
We create Buyer Personas through research, surveys, and interviews. All with a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside your contacts database.
How to research prospects?
Web browsers record our every move. A brand with an online presence can use that data for further analysis.
Prospects on your website: Use the Google Analytics Audience Tool to understand the demographics of who is visiting your website.
Prospects on your Social Network: Use your Social Networks statistics to uncover details of who is interested in your message.
Prospects on your Email List: Segment your leads in your email list by interest and engagement. That provides a clear vision of what is more engaging to your audience.
How to research customers?
Customers database: Use your customer database to uncover similarities, patterns, and preferences.
Email Survey: Create an email campaign for your most engaged customers, asking specific questions in an online form.
Live call: Invite your current brand advocates to take part in a one-on-one call with you to talk about their experience with your brand.
How to invite participants?
Discount: offer a discount code for their next purchase.
Exclusive Gift: offer a gift based on their past interest. One that is not available otherwise.
Early Access: A great choice for new product launches. Offer early access and/or exclusive bonuses.
How to combine your Buyer Persona with a Buyer’s Journey
Buyer Personas are not static beings. They are moving somewhere. Your job is to steer that movement towards the bottom of your sales funnel.
Combining Buyer Personas with the Buyer’s Journey is a crucial step most people miss.
How many Personas do you need?
3 to 5 Personas is what you need to create an accurate and profitable Buyer Persona Template.
That range varies depending on these 3 factors:
The size of your business.
The number of solutions you provide.
How diverse is your target audience.
Fewer than 3 is not enough to create one Persona for each Buyer’s Journey stage. That means you will leave potential customers outside the reach of your message.
More than 5 makes your message too complex. That forces your audience to waste too much energy to understand it. They will tend to leave.
Buyers Personas & Buyer’s Journey
In the book <a href=”https://angelomagno.com/aff/breakthrough-advertising” target=”_blank rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene Schwartz’s presents the 5 Levels of Awareness.
We can use this concept to group Buyer Persona in different stages:
Unaware: People don’t know they have a problem.
Problem Aware: People know they have a problem, but they don’t know the solution.
Solution Aware: People know the solution for their problem, but they don’t know how to solve it.
Product Aware: People know products and services to help them solve their problems. They might know your brand as one of these options.
Most Aware: These are your customers. Your job is to keep serving and inspiring them to become Brand Advocates.
If you have 5 Buyer Personas, you should have 1 for each Buyer’s Journey stage. What if you have fewer Personas? We need to combine the journey stages. Here is how:
3 Buyer Personas:
Unaware / Problem Aware.
Solution Aware / Product Aware.
Most Aware.
4 Buyer Personas:
Unaware / Problem Aware.
Solution Aware.
Product Aware.
Most Aware.
Not tailoring your message to different buying stages is like throwing pieces of paper on a fan, hoping for them to fall into a small bucket.
Some will, by accident, while most will fly elsewhere.
How to approach Buyer Personas in different stages of the Buyer’s Journey
We learned how many Buyer Personas we need and how to place them into a Buyer’s Journey.
The last piece of this puzzle is to realize what you have to offer in each of those stages.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 1?
Self Awareness.
Brand Awareness.
Motivation.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 2?
Pain points realization.
Small wins.
Service, gratitude, reciprocity.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 3?
Curiosity.
Guidance.
Solutions.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 4?
Identity.
Reciprocity.
Transformation.
What o offer Buyer Personas in Stage 5?
Service.
Reciprocity.
Value.
Next steps.
You are now able to create the most profitable Buyer Persona Template for your brand.
The last step of our conversation here is to learn what a Buyer Persona Template looks like.
That is the path we are uncovering next.
Buyer Persona Template: What to offer to people looking for more than just products
So far, you learned why and how you should create a Buyer Persona Template for your brand.
The question now is: What does a Buyer Persona Template look like?
We already covered that Personas are the social version of our personality we use to be part of groups.
I am a parent, so I need to solve parenting problems.
I am a traveler, so I need to solve travel problems.
I am a student, so I need to solve educational problems.
A Buyer Persona is a viable market because it’s not too small to be unsustainable nor too large to be unrelatable.
An individual is too small, and a target audience is too vague.
You must know your Buyer Personas better than they know themselves. That allows you to provide solutions to problems they don’t even know they have.
We are covering from basic demographic descriptions to more complex psychological demeanor.
Buyer Persona Template Part #1: Demographics
Demographics is all about how to categorize Personas based on their personal information. Think of it as the most basic stage to help you tailor your message.
Name
The 2 most powerful words in any language and across every culture are:
You: direct address to someone.
Name: direct and intimate address to someone.
Address your audience by their names when possible. If it’s not, use the second person – you.
Avoid speaking to mass audiences because you end up speaking to no one.
To address Personas by name, you must get that information as soon as possible in the Buyer’s Journey.
Age
Did you know that every word is associated with an age range? Check these words:
Mom.
Mother.
Motherhood.
Words differ by complexity and by the age of people interested in what the words convey.
The core idea is: the lower the age association, the easier it is to understand your message.
If you try to apply ages to those 3 words, you will find that:
The first is for the youngest audience.
The third is for the oldest.
The second is for someone in the middle.
Writers, screenwriters, and copywriters adjust the words to deliver a clear message. They use word grading metrics to establish goals for their messaging.
The Flesch Reading-Ease is a readability score to test how easy a piece of content is by associating a score to a grade.
This blog post rates Grade 4. It means that people at that age range could read it, making it even easier for older people to understand.
Marital status
This data can help you in various ways, depending on the products and services you provide:
Say you are in the wedding industry. You would like to address engaged single couples, not married ones.
On the other hand, if you are in the Relationship Counseling industry. You would like to address married couples.
What if you are in the Baby Clothing industry? You would like to address married couples in a certain age range.
Profession
Profession shows which areas of interest your Personas have.
IT professionals are great Buyer Personas for computer companies.
Lawyers are great Buyer Personas for tailored suit brands.
Athletes are great Buyer Personas for running shoes companies.
COVID pandemic forced the hand around home office appliances industry, for instance.
Gender
You can use this data to understand how different men and women interact with your brand. That helps even if your products are not gender-specific.
That can influence:
Brand colors.
Brand images.
Brand Typography
Also, men and women play different buying decision roles. Understanding the nuances between both is crucial.
Buyer Persona Template Part #2: Interests
Fortune cookies are well known for carrying hidden messages.
Lou Montulli coined the term cookie to name data transported from a browser to a web server.
Cookies record our:
Preferences and interests.
Employment status.
Geolocation.
Just to name a few of them.
Cookies allow brands to create targeted ads like it was never possible before.
Buyer Persona Template Part #3: External Problems
External problems are tangible obstacles between people’s current state and their goals.
It manifests itself in the physical world and can be listed as pain points.
Addressing External Problems
In an External Problem scenario:
Restaurants sell food.
Plumbers fix pipes.
Clothing stores sell shirts.
But the reason people will get interested in doing business with you is not limited to solving external problems.
Something else is going on.
Buyer Persona Template Part #4: Internal Problems
External Problems are the anticipation and feeling around what could happen if those external problems occur.
That’s an Internal Problem.
Addressing Internal Problems
The purpose of external problems is to uncover internal ones. It is about helping your Buyer Personas answer the question: Do I have what it takes?
Your Buyer Persona might feel frustrated, Incomplete, or confused. But that is only a current situation.
Addressing those internal motivators that are being manifested externally, inspires the transformation they are looking for.
In an Internal Problem scenario:
Restaurants sell health, social status, and identity.
Plumbers sell family security, tranquility, and financial stability.
Clothing stores sell an identity, comfort, and social status.
What internal motivators your products solve?
Buyer Persona Template Part #5: Philosophical Problems
Philosophical Problems are about something larger than even the feelings about the problems. It is about the question why.
Why does it matter?
Philosophical Problems can be identified by the words “should” and “shouldn’t”. It is part of how they view themselves in the world.
Addressing Philosophical Problems
Your Buyer Personas need to get involved in stories greater than themselves.
They value brands that give them a voice in a larger narrative and provide a stronger sense of meaning.
In a Philosophical Problems scenario, people ask:
Why should restaurants care about healthy food?
Why should plumbers urge to be efficient and reliable?
Why should clothing stores be inclusive?
Is there a larger cause your brand contributes to?
Are your products tools to fight back against what should not be or give birth to what must be?
Buyer Persona Templates to use as reference
Now you know why your brand needs a Buyer Persona, how to create one, and which information is relevant. Now, check these templates and see the concepts in action.
Make sure you understand the concepts we covered to translate these examples to your reality.
BUYER PERSONA TEMPLATE #1: BUSY BOB
Name: Busy Bob
Age: 26
Marital Status: Single
Profession: Store Manager
Gender: Male
Location: New York City.
Education: BA in Administration
Interests: Online shopping, sports, travel
External Problem: Difficulty finding shoes that fit his feet.
Internal Problem: Lack of identity because he buys shoes that fit, instead of the ones he likes.
Philosophical Problem: Why should he struggle between comfort and style?
BUYER PERSONA TEMPLATE #2: BRANDY DAY
Name: Brandy Day
Age: 37
Marital Status: Married
Profession: Psychotherapist
Gender: Female
Location: Los Angeles, CA.
Education: BS in Psychology
Interests: Lifestyle, health food, fashion
External Problem: Not being able to travel.
Internal Problem: Stress between geographical flexibility and financial stability.
Philosophical Problem: Why should she keep herself from traveling more? Why should she focus more on her professional career than freedom? Why does the sense of going anywhere matter?
BUYER PERSONA TEMPLATE #3: SAM SUMMERS
Name: Sam Summers
Age: 20
Marital Status: Single
Profession: Student
Gender: Male
Location: San Francisco, CA
Education: Full-time interior design student.
Interests: Home decor, design, and painting.
External Problem: Not having enough money.
Internal Problem: Being unable to help his family.
Philosophical Problem: Why should he be a better student? Why should he get a degree? Why should he be able to make more money?
Your Buyer Personas are more than just buyers. They are real people with real challenges.
You create intangible forces to build tangible results by inspiring them to create the best version of themselves.
People will do anything for those who:
Encourage their dreams.
Help with their fears.
Confirm their suspicion.
Brands that solve more than external problems and take their customers into a transformational journey are the ones who build waitlists, brand advocates, and word-of-mouth.
May you find the voice of your brand in the mind of your Buyer Personas.
May you help your customers find the best version of themselves.
May you leave your mark in the ongoing process of building a better world.
