Have you ever read or listened to an advertisement and thought “Wow, it’s like they read my mind”? It may have even seemed like the language used was pulled straight from your own head.

This is a sign of effective marketing, and it only happens when the brand advertising to you really knows who you are and what you want.

How do businesses do this? Through buyer personas. And by using personas within your own business, you can have your own prospects and customers wondering if you’ve read their minds as well.

‍What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a researched-based representation of your target customer. This doesn’t mean that you find one customer and direct all of your attention towards them. Instead, you need to do some research.

As a business owner, you have access to many different sources of data within your business. These include Google Analytics, social media statistics, conversion rates, surveys, and much more. Once this information has been collated and analysed, you can begin to see trends and understand who your prospects are. You’ll learn where they live, how old they are, what they do for a living, their hopes and dreams, and what they want.

Businesses hoping to scale gain traction once they think about the actual people they’re marketing to, and not a faceless group of customers. That means that instead of talking about ‘prospects’ and ‘leads’, you’re talking about Mary, the 31-year- old mother of two who recently launched a business and finds it difficult to achieve a work-life balance.

It’s much easier to think about what type of content Mary would respond to than that faceless customer.

 Driving Sales with Buyer Personas

Buyer personas allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your prospects and customers. And when you use these personas strategically, they can drive sales.

One of the first things most business owners realise is that their product or service isn’t going to appeal to everyone. And this means that they must find what kind of people do need their help, and focus on building a relationship with those prospects.

Spending time delivering the wrong message to the wrong people is one of the worst mistakes you can make in your business. Once you begin using buyer personas, you can direct all of your sales and marketing efforts directly to your target customers.

Your brand will be where they’re hanging out. You’ll be speaking to them in their language. And you’ll be able to answer their questions, solve their problems, and delight them with your after-sale support.

This means a higher ROI on marketing since there’s less waste. Customers respond better to personalised, customer-focused messages, and this leads to higher engagement and conversion rates. In fact, Hubspot found that businesses segmenting emails by persona leads to a 16% higher clickthrough rate.

Need some help analysing your data, creating buyer personas, and driving sales this year? Get in touch today, and let’s tal.

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