In this sense, one of the most refined and effective tools in the arsenal of CMOs, strategists and creatives are business personas .
Business personas - or buyer personas - are vivid and detailed representations of hypothetical individuals , with emotions, aspirations and desires. What are they for? They provide us with an indispensable guide in creating messages and strategies, making each communication more personal and focused. When we imagine dialoguing with personas, in fact, we are naturally led to humanize our communications, adopt more client-centered strategies and test our services or products in a more credible and plausible way.
This is because simulating an interaction with fictitious entities - well-defined on the insights of a real audience - trains teams for the experience with real customers .
The result is a new efficiency in infinite aspects of customer japan telephone number data interaction (leads, sales, customer service, communication, etc.).
Creating effective personas is a delicate balance between art and science . It’s not enough to simply gather superficial information; it’s essential to conduct in-depth interviews , carefully collect data, and carefully observe purchasing behaviors. This data, once integrated with insights from centralized collection tools (such as CRM) and different company teams, must flow into well-defined and representative customer profiles. But be careful: like any effective tool, these personas must be periodically reviewed and updated based on new feedback and the latest trends in the market , or in our industry.
Investing in the accuracy and authenticity of Business Personas always pays off; in fact, for many companies it is increasingly the first key to successful campaigns and product or service launches .
That said, in this article we will delve deeper into:
What is a Business Persona?
How to Develop Authentic and Effective Business Personas
The strategic importance of Business Personas
Types of Personas
What is a Business Persona?
71% of companies that achieved their revenue goals had well-defined Business Personas.
Business Personas are essentially “avatars” of our ideal customers . These representations help us better understand who our customers are and what they want, allowing us to tailor content and interactions to their needs and preferences. While the concept of personas is not new, it is becoming increasingly important in a world where customers increasingly want personalized content .
But let's look more deeply into the matter: what really makes a Business Persona special?
Audience Representation : It works as a mirror of a specific segment of our audience, offering a clear picture of what they are looking for, want and value.
Multidisciplinary Tool : Initially used in design and UX processes, today Business Personas are fundamental in many other marketing processes, especially in online campaigns.
Constantly Updated and Predictive : A Business Persona is not a fixed profile. It evolves with data and projections - such as customer feedback or purchasing behaviors -. Precisely for this reason, if well-constructed, a business persona is also an excellent predictive tool for identifying the new directions of our customers.
Guides Our Choices : Helps us make informed decisions, ensuring what we do is relevant and useful to our audiences.
User Personas vs. Business Personas
The Business Persona is a semi-fictional representation of our ideal customer, while the User Persona embodies those who actually use our products. It is true that often the buyer could also be the end user, but we do not assume that this is always the case.
To build these personas, we rely on market research and hard data provided by our current clients. This data-driven approach allows us to refine our strategy, reducing the margin for error and ensuring targeted interventions.
Screenshot 2023-09-08 at 09.38.12
Typically, personas materialize in 1-2 page outlines or documents, where we highlight salient aspects of the profile, from motivations to goals, from needs to desires, to any concerns. But these are not simple lists: they are a real portrait that helps us get into the minds of our customers and users.
How to Develop Authentic and Effective Business Personas
Business Personas drive a 2-5x increase in interactions with company websites.
A buyer persona has a gender, education level, geolocation, age, interests and in some cases even some specific physical characteristics - for example when we talk about cosmetics only for a certain skin color or for clothes of a particular size. The characteristics of a buyer persona have a great variability and depend largely on the product or service to which they refer.
Some services related to environmental awareness, just to name one case, will have a buyer persona also described by their sphere of values or membership in a political movement .
Creating a buyer persona is not so immediate. If in the past a market research and a psychological analysis of consumers of certain services were “enough”, today the ability to collect data on customers and process them makes it essential to draw on this field of knowledge as well.
Finally, it is also necessary to consider data collections carried out directly among your customers or prospects, with requests for feedback, direct questions, satisfaction questionnaires and the like, but also recurring purchases.
Please note: there is not just one buyer persona when talking about a product, rather we can create several, for a number that depends greatly on the type of service or good offered.
Creating a set of persona examples allows you to transform more and more site visitors into customers, truly personalizing each message and producing interesting content. Every word, every image, every video published online will therefore be truly effective because they will respond to real needs and problems of users.
It is important, therefore, to remember that buyer personas are not static models , rather they continually evolve over time based on business objectives and, if your business changes, the personas should also change with it.
When You Need to Create a Business Persona
Creating a Business Persona is not simply a matter of imagining an ideal customer. It is an operation that requires method, research and deep intuition. Effective Personas are in fact the result of a balanced mix of quantitative analysis and human understanding. Here is how to proceed:
