A buyer persona is a depiction of your ideal customer based on actual data from market research, competitor analysis, and existing customer profiles.
Most businesses have multiple buyer personas, with each one describing in detail what drives them to buy their product or service. For example, the person’s age, location, job title, goals, and challenges they face.
Buyer personas are key to ongoing marketing success. They also describe your customers’ buying behaviors. This includes what drives them to purchase your product or service and what their decision-making and purchasing processes actually look like.
In this article, we’ll explore how to create data-backed buyer personas and look at a few examples that go beyond the basics. Whether you’re starting from scratch and need help understanding the differences between B2C and B2B buyer personas, or you’re looking to refresh your existing personas, we have some wildly creative examples to share with you throughout this guide.
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Why are buyer personas important?
Buyer personas help marketing, sales, customer support, and product teams make more informed and smarter decisions for the business. On the marketing side, the insights from defining buyer personas can help guide and improve marketing strategies in many ways:
- Identifying customer pain points allows you to create more targeted messaging and customized offerings.
- Knowing where potential customers spend their time (online and offline) makes it easier to distribute content to the right channels.
- Documenting key buyer persona profiles ensures that all marketing efforts are aligned and meeting customer needs.
How to create your buyer personas using data
A majority of (ineffective) buyer personas are based on stereotypes, fictional information, or blanket assumptions. A mistake we often see with buyer personas is too much focus on generic customer characteristics and little focus on the actual challenges, goals, and factors that influence the person’s buying decisions. This is all information that can easily be uncovered with the right tools.
Make sure to include the following steps when creating your buyer personas: