The First Step to Successful Copywriting: Create Your Buyer Persona
By Kim Essex
"A copywriter should have an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them." - George Gribbin
What is a Buyer Persona?
You've probably heard the term "buyer persona" somewhere along the lines, or maybe not.
So, let's start with a simple definition. A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal
customer. It defines your ideal customer based on demographics, motivations, goals and behaviors.
Why Do I Need a Buyer Persona?
You can't be all things to all people. You need to know who you're trying to reach and
what they want to see. If you know these things, you'll be able to create relevant and useful
content that converts - and content they want to read. A buyer persona helps you build a strong
connection with your customers.
Your goal shouldn't be to get the most readers or the most website visitors. It should
be to get the right readers and the right website visitors. Your content might be popular,
but this doesn't mean that it will convert people into customers. If you want to get customers,
you need to promote your products or services to the right audience. You need to make sure
your content addresses their specific problems and offers the best solutions.
A buyer persona helps you create content that motivates and resonates with your customers.
It helps you shape marketing and sales strategies because you know what challenges your customers
are facing and what they're trying to accomplish. It helps you develop new products and services
because you'll know what products and services your customers want and need.
How Do I Create a Buyer Persona?
1. Create a list of questions specific to your industry so you can get answers that are
relevant to your type of business.
Some of your questions should be based on demographics. Your questions might include
things like gender, age, income, occupation, geographic area, married or single, children,
education, company size, role, industry, etc.
Other questions should be based on motivations, goals, and behaviors. You need to learn
what really motivates your customers and what really drives them. Dig deep to uncover the "why"
behind their actions. Remember to use questions specific to your type of business. Here are
some sample questions.
• What are your primary goals?
• What are your biggest challenges or obstacles?
• What are your main objections?
• How do you research and select vendors?
• What are some purchases you've made recently?
• What type of social media do you use?
• What publications or blogs do you read?
• Where do you go for most of your information?
• What decisions do you make?
• What is your background?
2. Interview your current customers, former customers, and prospects. You can also interview
your sales and customer service people because they may have some valuable insights. Your current
customer base is a great place to start with your interviews because they've already purchased
your product or service.
3. Do some additional research. Social media is a great place to find information. Facebook
Insights helps you understand the audience that interacts with your posts. Professional groups
on LinkedIn help you find trending topics that people are talking about in specific industries.
Twitter Analytics shows demographic information and the primary field of interest of your followers.
4. Look for trends after you've interviewed a few people and done some research. Patterns
and similarities will help you identify your ideal customer. If you identify more than one
trend in a common series of questions, you may want to create more than one buyer persona.
5. It's time to pull everything together and create your buyer persona. It's great to
include actual quotes from your interviews. You may have noticed some common keywords and phrases
that your buyers used during your interviews and research, so include them in your buyer persona.
Here are a couple of tools you can use to create your buyer persona:
MakeMyPersona by HubSpot,
Buyer Persona Templates by Buyer Persona Institute
Visit my website at Kim Essex Copywriting
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