| By Aashish Pahwain Marketing Essentials|Reader DisclosureOur content is reader-supported. This means we may earn a commission if you click on some of our links.
Thrifty Tylor, Trendy Sally, and Discount Dolly are not just fancy names. They all represent different categories of buyers with similar habits, backgrounds, likes, and decision-making processes.
Thrifty Tylor spends her money only on the things she thinks are of utmost importance and hardly buys any brand which she hasn’t heard of or tried yet.
Stylish Sally loves receiving notifications about the new fashion styles and always listens to the recommendations of the influencer she follows. She doesn’t care about the price as much as she cares about not being left out.
Discount Dolly only buys when there’s a sale going on and there are times when she may end up buying discounted products that she never heard of or tried before.
Thrifty Tylor, Trendy Sally, and Discount Dolly are buyer personas.
Many times, we see companies are all about themselves and rarely listen to what the customer actually wants (like the case with Snapchat). Creating buyer personas help you to not be such a company.
If you’ve come to this article by searching “What Is Buyer Persona?”, you must have already gotten a clue of what it actually is. Nevertheless, here’s a comprehensive guide to explain everything you should know.
A buyer persona is a fictionalised character representing a brand’s ideal customer created based on market research of prospective customers and existing customers and real data on the existing customers.
In simple terms, buyer persona refers to the description of a consumer’s personality traits and behaviour as well as their demographics which would help the marketer to assess their right target audience.
Importance Of Creating Buyer Personas
You need to create a buyer persona for your brand as it helps to –
Understand your target audience better
Develop better products which the audience really wants
Create better offers to bring in more customers
Develop strategies to create a long-term relationship with the customers
Get better insights to help to create a better USP
Buyer Persona Elements
A buyer persona answers the who, what, why, and how about the ideal customer. This requires you to conduct extensive market research of who is already buying your offerings and who is willing to buy it. A perfect persona is made up of the following elements –
Demographics
Demographics are the statistical data relating to the ideal customer’s age, gender, marital status, family size, income, religion, race, occupation, nationality, etc. It gives a statistical description of the customer segment the company is planning to target.
Some important demographic categories that you should look for while creating a buyer persona are –
Age
Gender
Marital status
Number of children (if applicable)
Occupation
Annual income
Education level
Living status (homeowner or renter)
Psychographics & Behaviour
After knowing your buyer’s demographics, you also need to know your buyer’s behaviour, personality, values, spending habits or patterns etc. Psychographic and behavioural market segmentation is done to know more about the customer’s personality, lifestyle, and attitude.
VALS (Value, Attitudes & LifeStyles) Framework is a proprietary research methodology used for psychographic and behavioural segmentation of consumers into eight types which are as follows :
Innovators: These consumers are on the leading edge to change. They have high incomes, self-esteem and abundant resources. They have their individual tastes in things and prefer purchasing prestige goods and services.
Thinkers: This group of consumers is known to have high resources and are motivated by ideals. They are mature, responsible, well-educated professionals. Their leisure activities revolve around their homes, but they are well informed with what goes on in the world. They are open to new ideas and social change. Even though they have high incomes but are practical consumers and rational decision makers
Believers: This group of consumers has low resources, modest income and is motivated by ideals. They are conservative and predictable consumers who favour established brands. Their lives revolve around family, church, community and the nation.
Achievers: This group of consumers has high resources and are motivated by achievements. They are successful work-oriented people and get their satisfaction from jobs and families. They are politically conservative and respect authority as well as status.
Strivers: They have low resources and are also motivated by achievements. They have few values similar to achievers which are economic, social and psychological resources. They give due importance to Style as they strive to emulate the people they admire.
Experiencers: They are known to have high resources and are motivated by self-expression. They are the youngest of all consumers. They have a lot of energy which they pour in physical exercises and social activities. They are avid consumers spending heavily on clothing, fast food, music and other youthful favourite things with an emphasis on new products and services, hence lacking brand loyalty.
Makers: This group of consumers has resources and are alike experiencers for being motivated by self-expression. They are practical and value self-sufficiency. They are focused on the family work and physical recreation. They have little interest in the broader world. They favour practical and functional products.
Survivors: They have the lowest incomes. They have very few resources to be included in any consumer self-orientation and are the oldest of all the consumers. Because of their limited means, they tend to be brand loyal consumers.
Influencers
Influencers refer to the forces that influence the buyer’s decision-making process. These influencers are of two types: External and Internal Influencers.
A goal refers to what the customer wants to achieve. It can be classified into primary, secondary, and tertiary goals where the primary is of the utmost importance and tertiary has less importance in his life.
Challenges include circumstances and limitations which keep the customer away from achieving the goals. These challenges lead to problems whose solutions the customer looks for in an offering.
How To Create A Buyer Persona?
Once the market research is complete, creating a buyer persona is not an uphill struggle. All you need to do is put the persona elements in the right place. Here’s a template of buyer persona to help you create a detailed buyer persona.
Buyer Persona Template
Our buyer persona template is made up of four sections. The first section talks about the demographics of the customer, second talks about the psychographics, third about goals, challenges, and solutions, and fourth gives the arguments about why he will and will not choose the brand’s offering.
Click here to download the buyer persona template.
There are two corporates/working professionals named Tyler Dickinson and Mikaela Pascal (Age: 26, 28) and are from Houston and earn an income of $6,444 per month. They are not much tech savvy and are in search of a phone which can be useful for their daily routine, work and recreational time but they also want the phone to be of the premium quality which ensures that they stand out of the crowd when they possess a phone which can not only be trusted for its efficiency but also give them a status symbol. iPhone would be the right phone for them to purchase as it’s an affordable phone for them and it can fulfil all of their needs and demands.
Reese’s
There are two College going students named Ethan James and Brittany Cuadra (Age: 19, 21) and are from Utah and do an Internship for their additional and recreational expenses. They earn a sum of $480 – $600 per week. They have a sweet tooth for chocolates, especially the ones which are filled with Milk Chocolate, Peanut and Cocoa Butter. Their specifications of a Chocolate would be fulfilled by Reese’s with its variety in shapes and form of Peanut Butter Cups and Bars, the chocolates are also of an affordable price for them.
The above Buyer Personas can be framed out well when the Marketing and Brand Building official of that brand refers to the elements of Buyer Persona to make a fictional representation of their ideal customer with perfection.
Go On, Tell Us What You Think!
Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on buyer persona in the comments section.
A startup consultant, digital marketer, traveller, and philomath. Aashish has worked with over 20 startups and successfully helped them ideate, raise money, and succeed. When not working, he can be found hiking, camping, and stargazing.
