What is a customer persona? “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” -Hubspot
Not knowing your ideal customer is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a small business owner. You will end up spending far more money than you need to on advertising, with less than satisfactory results. Taking the time to identify your ideal customer will help you market your business better and bring in new and more qualified leads.
Many customer personas are extremely in depth and can be rather challenging to complete. Putting aside the time to complete a full customer person is not always something a small business owner can commit to. Unfortunately, not having your ideal customer in mind when building your marketing strategy will significantly decrease the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
A recent report from SiriusDecisions stated that “Using personas can drive results such as a 28% higher campaign response rate, 2-3 month shorter sales cycle, and 25% increase in marketing influenced revenue,” the value of creating a customer persona becomes very clear! Having at least an outline of your ideal customer will greatly impact your marketing strategy. The more information you can identify the better, but you don’t need to spend hours figuring out every interest and hobby before you are able to effectively market to your ideal customer. To help you, Marketing Maiden has created an extremely fast way for you to build your ideal customer persona that is as easy as: who, what, where, when and, why! We even created a simple worksheet for you to fill out that will help you identify your ideal customer in less than 10 minutes!
Use the above worksheet and below questions to build your simple customer persona. Try to really picture your ideal customer, get specific, and think from their perspective.
Simple Customer Persona Questions:
Who
Who is your customer? This will just be simple demographic information about your customer, such as: age range, gender, education level, household income, job title or position, and family size.
What
What are their pain points? What are the problems that your customer would have to have in which they would need your product or service? What other product have they likely purchased in the past? What problem do they ultimately want to be solved?
Where
Where is your ideal customer located? Many marketing campaigns will require a set location, so get as specific as you can and come up with information for a 25-mile radius of where your ideal customer would be located. If your product or service has a broad reach, then identify 2-3 main areas that have a high concentration of your core demographics and are similar to your current customers.
When
When will your customer buy your product or service? Is there a certain season, month, or time of year that your customer will buy? When will a customer need your product or service? What has to happen in their life or work for them to buy your product or service? When in your sales process does your customer tend to buy?
Why
Why do they need your product or service? What value do you bring that they need? What benefits do they seek?
Once you answer these questions and fill out your simple customer persona worksheet, you will be able to use your information to make informed decisions and run well thought out marketing campaigns with exceptional results! If you have any questions feel free to reach out to meredith@marketingmaiden.com
Takeaway: Building a customer persona can be very overwhelming and time consuming but it is extremely important to your business and marketing activities. Use our simple worksheet to help you identify your ideal customer using the who, what, where, when and why method in under 10 minutes!
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