Welcome back! In this lesson, we're going to talk about a really cool marketing tool that will help you understand your target audience - buyer persona. Also known as "marketing persona", "customer persona", or even "user persona".
So what is it? A buyer persona is a fictional generalized representation of your ideal customer. Buyer personas help you to understand your existing and prospective customers better.
They make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors and concerns of different types of buyers. Since not all clients are equally valuable and profitable for your business, it makes perfect sense for you to focus your efforts on the more promising ones. And that's exactly why we need buyer personas.
To create your buyer persona try to remember some of the clients you've built a successful business relationship with. What's their line of business? Banking, insurance, online teaching, government services, etc.
How big is their business? Small, medium, large, - based on the number of employees. What problems are they trying to solve by using Bitrix24?
Why did they decide to use your services as a Bitrix24 Partner? What are the client's priorities? Is it the product features, the ease of implementation, the price or something else?
Has the client been considering alternatives? If yes, what are they? Where is your client based?
Is it one city or region, or is it multiple areas or even countries? How did the client find out about your company? Was it online or offline?
Was it social media or word-of-mouth? You need to find the exact source that led the client to you. This list could go on.
The most important thing is that you collect enough data to make a rational conclusion and act upon it. If you've been in business for a while, you can just go ahead and interview some of your real clients. This will give you tons of insights.
If you're just starting out, try to give an honest, realistic answer to each of these questions we've mentioned above. You may want to consult with other employees who work with clients. Don't go on a simple assumption that all of the profitable clients will sooner or later be yours.
Oh, and one more thing. Be sure to revisit your buyer persona from time to time. People change, market trends change.
You may change. All of this has to be reflected in the updated version of your buyer persona. Now, let's move on to the actual process of creating a buyer persona.
In order for our buyer persona to be as real and as grounded as possible, we need to give a specific attributes like name, age, occupation, interests, level of income, etc. Basically, anything you can think of. As long as this information can help you with your marketing efforts.
For example, let's say our fictional buyer's name is Roberto. He's male, 35 years old, owns a fitness club in downtown Verona. Roberto is looking for a software solution that would help him store and manage client data - CRM; communicate with his employees - Chats and video calls; create workout schedules - Calendar; and set tasks, Tasks and Projects.
Roberto also uses Instagram and Facebook to actively promote his club and communicate with existing and potential clients. Having had some experience with similar software in the past, Roberto will probably go out and read some of the professional online reviews before making his final decision. This is just an example, but even this simple example already gives you plenty of information that could be useful for marketing.
On the contrary, creating a marketing strategy or even a short-term plan without even a basic buyer persona will probably lead to wasted time and money. In order to grow, you need to understand your ideal customers inside and out, and integrate this knowledge across your entire business. And when you do this, you will be able to target specific types of clients, find your clients where you expect them to be - online or offline, tailor your offer to what your clients need, speak your client's language, make sure your message is heard loud and clear.
All in all, having a buyer persona makes your marketing efforts more focused and efficient. Now, some of you might ask: "Well, how many buyer personas do I need to create? " - It all depends on your target audience.
If you have several distinct segments within it, then you might need to create a separate buyer persona for each of these segments. Finally, during the process of creating your buyer persona for a particular client segment, ask yourself this question: How big is this segment? In our example with Roberto, it will probably be something like: how many fitness clubs or similar businesses are there in Verona?
Depending on the answer, you might want to expand the geography, change the attributes of the buyer persona, or create another one. Well, that does it for today's lesson. Thanks for watching and see you soon!
