5 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Buyer Personas

5 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a snapshot of a particular user/consumer/potential consumer. The goal in creating personas is to identify their needs, expectations, objectives, behaviors and so on. Buyer personas are a tool to help you effectively communicate with and ultimately move leads through your sales funnel.

A buyer persona can be based on assumptions you glean from discovery or they can be in-depth and backed by solid research findings (but we all know that’s not always possible). Either way, here are a few questions to get you started on the right path, especially when you don’t have the luxury of time or budget for the in-depth research.

1. Personal Background? These are questions like age, gender, income, education level, single or married etc. This is a great place to start to help develop a clearer picture of your ideal audience.
2. What is their job title/role? Know who you need to talk to to get your foot in the door. Who makes the decisions that gets your product or service working for them? This also helps you make some assumptions about what a typical day looks like for them.
3. What are their goals? This is pretty straightforward. If you are a marketing company your persona should be answering questions about their profit projections, their brand identity, etc. If you are a personal trainer your persona should be telling you about how they maybe want to bulk up or maybe lose some baby weight. You need to know what they are trying to accomplish so you can help them get to the finish line and see value in you.
4. What are their challenges to accomplishing these goals? By identifying a prospect’s challenges more quickly your sales team can better direct the conversation by asking the right questions and quickly providing the best solutions.
5. Where do they currently seek out and consume information? This question also helps you envision a typical day for your persona. More importantly it lets you know where you need to be present. If they consume information in print publications vs. influencer blogs vs. their social media feed. This information will help guide your content strategy and how you allocate your marketing dollars.

Remember buyer personas are basically characters that we make up based on what we know about our ideal customers. They are a tool to guide our marketing and sales strategies.