Developing Buyer Personas for Your Business to Consumer Business

By Lynton Team

If you want to sell your product, you have to know who you’re selling to. Selling skis to people who skateboard won’t cut it. This is where buyer personas come in.

Buyer personas are archetypes of your ideal customers, including existing and potential customer types. Buyer personas are important for guiding all aspects of your marketing plan, from website and blog content to social media and email strategies.

To create buyer personas, you’ll need to conduct interviews with your customer or prospective customers to help you gain the insight you may be missing. Here are some topics to cover and questions to ask during your interviews.

What To Ask During Buyer Persona Interviews

Use this section as a guide to structuring your buyer persona interviews. Please note that not all questions will apply to all interviews or products/services. Use your best judgment and pick the ones that will be most helpful to you.

Demographics

First things first: Demographics. Getting the background information of your audience will help paint a picture of your buyer.

Ask:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Race
  • Education level
  • Occupation
  • Income status
  • Relationship status
  • Children
  • Pets
  • Family unit
  • Company size
  • Company revenue

Asking basic demographic questions is an ideal way to begin building a relationship with the interviewee, preparing them for more in-depth questions. Demographic information can additionally help determine the type of content to create as well as the most effective place to promote it, be it Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or another channel.

Social Life

Next up, understanding the social habits of your audience also contributes to the effective targeting of content, offers, and promotional channels.

Ask:

  • What are your hobbies and interests?
  • What do you do for fun?
  • Where do you get your news: TV, radio, newspapers, specific websites, other online avenues?
  • Where do you spend your time outside of work and home?
  • Where do you spend your time online?
  • What are your communication preferences: text, email, phone, mail, other?
  • What content do you like to consume?
  • How do you learn new information for your job?

You especially want to focus on their online habits, asking about their social media platform memberships, how frequently they interact on them, and any websites they regularly visit or subscribe to.

Buying Decision Process

All buyers have a process they go through before they make a large purchase. They may read reviews, perform product comparisons, and research various companies that offer the solution they need.

Ask:

  • Who makes the purchasing decisions in your home/workplace?
  • What research do you conduct before making a purchase?
  • How do you determine a budget?
  • Walk me through the steps of making a purchase at your company/home.
  • What barriers do you face when making a purchase? How do you overcome them?

Pay particular attention to their specific pain points during the purchasing process and how they were addressed. Focus on what made them choose one product and company over another.

Work Life

Since work and work-related activities take up a major portion of the average person’s weekday, it makes sense that most B2C buyer persona interviews focus on the role of the persona at work.

Ask:

  • What is your job role?
  • What does your average day look like?
  • Who do you report to?
  • Who reports to you?
  • What does it mean to be successful in your role?
  • What are your biggest challenges?
  • What type of content are you most likely to read?

Understanding what a persona’s day looks like unveils critical information that points to their biggest challenges and where they need the most help to be successful at their job.

Read on: 4 Signs It’s Time to Update Your Buyer Personas

Working With Your Company

Customers who agree to be interviewed are likely to already have a positive view of your company, and you can learn a lot more about this relationship with additional inquiries. Ask how they decided to work with your company in the first place. Find out if they were comparing other vendors and, if so, what ultimately swayed their decision in your direction.

Learning more about the ongoing relationship with your company is also important. Here you can ask what they think is the key differentiator that sets your company apart from competitors. Also, inquire about things they admire and things they feel could be changed.

Having a real, live customer on the phone for your persona interview can also uncover crucial information regarding the type of content they want, need, and would enjoy seeing on your website. Take advantage of this direct access to find out what content they would most like to see as well as what content they feel would be most beneficial to help someone in the midst of making a buying decision.;

The Difference Between Buyer Personas and ICPs

Odds are you’ve heard both of these terms thrown around. So what’s the difference between a buyer persona and an ideal client profile (ICP)?

An ICP is a semi-fictitious company with all the qualities that make it a good fit for your services. Whereas a buyer persona is a generalized representation of your customer.

Read more about their differences and which persona is right for you here.

Get Started with Buyer Personas

Buyer persona information can serve as the entire backbone of your marketing plan. Prepare your interview questions in advance to make the most of your time. And don’t forget to follow up with their answers by asking, “why?” Sometimes their answer to this question will unveil more than you anticipated.

HubSpot has a great tool to help you get started with buyer personas, or you can reach out to our team for guidance.