What is a Buyer Persona? How to build it, objectives and examples

A Buyer Persona is a more or less fictitious representation of the potential or final consumer. How is this? This representation is built from demographic information, behavior, needs and motivations. A good brand strategy will always include a good analysis of the market, therefore, also of the public.
To better understand our audience we need to know what they like, how they think, what needs they want to cover, what aspects they are dissatisfied with... When we work on the Buyer Persona, we try to describe a single person (or several), but never an audience such as broad concept.

This exercise allows us to refine our product or service offering and create more effective promotional actions. It is not the same as the target, which is a much more abstract concept. The Buyer Persona allows you to add characteristics that offer a mental and more emotional image of the potential customer.
If you manage to adapt to the client and offer that personalized response, you will be able to become a reference and generate a very valuable asset: the public's trust.

First of all, you have to obtain the most powerful weapon: information. You can use interviews, surveys, market research, exploratory analysis or social networks. The result will be an unrealistic profile sheet, but specific enough to develop our strategy. You have to give it a specific name and analyze the main characteristics (income, sex, age, location, professional position, needs, hobbies, objectives...).

Once all this data has been collected, you must describe the history of your Buyer Persona. From here, present or even adjust your product to adapt it to the needs of your Buyer. The objective is to try to solve some of their concerns with your product and build a discourse aligned with their perceptions, values ​​and needs. This speech should show, briefly and simply, that what you offer is the appropriate solution to their needs.

The ideal is to create a file for each Buyer Persona, depending on the types of clients you have. This sheet must include:

• Your basic information (name, age, profession, educational level and location)
• Brief biography or life situation
• Hobbies
• Routines in a normal week
• Challenges or problems
• Personal goals
• Professional goals
• How do we solve those objectives or problems?
• Questions your Buyer would ask
  -Information channels they use and keywords used in a search

Let’s analyze the case of the hypothetical figure of Lucía from the point of view of a school that offers training for entrepreneurs.

Working with these sheets will help you better identify and develop the product and brand, identifying the “ideal customer” that interests you most for your business. To work face to face with the client and offer them personalized treatment, it is important to base yourself on this concept on which inbound marketing (current relationship marketing) is based.
It is important to know that Buyer Personas are dynamic, they will evolve as the information collected increases. Additionally, they will also evolve as a result of interactions with the business.

The Buyer Persona will determine a multitude of decisions, such as how to organize the company, know potential customers, the direction that product development should follow or where to invest resources in the most optimal way possible.

In short, we recommend this tool because it helps to correctly guide the project or business and to refine and better understand the target audience. That is, understand the reason for their responses and behaviors.
The Buyer Persona is the semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer, but there are also negative Buyer Personas, which are those who are not interested in being customers (because they are not profitable, for example). It is important to identify them so as not to invest unnecessary efforts in them.

The advantages of creating a Buyer Persona are numerous: knowing better the audience you are targeting, designing or redesigning your brand, improving the content marketing strategy, thinking about new acquisition channels, optimizing the journey and user experience... The final objective will be to have the perception that we want among our audience, for users to have a positive experience and, finally, even customer loyalty.