However, there are common mistakes that people make when setting up their Buyer Personas, so we’ll be covering those off today, to help those of you who may just be getting started, or want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your efforts.
1st Mistake: Creating Too Many Personas
While it may seem like a good idea to create a persona for every single business title or person that has ever come in as a lead, this is likely going to be counter-productive. Start by creating a single realistic persona, and grow from there. If you start getting too many personas who will only have trivial differences, and if over time, you find a persona is no longer relevant, then get rid of them.
This will help ensure that you’ve got the best personas in place for creating your marketing campaigns and really drilling down to who are the right people to target and create content for accordingly.
2nd Mistake: Not Profiling REAL Buyers
Don’t get caught up in creating personas for what your IDEAL customers are, as this may just be unrealistic and not helpful when trying to attract the RIGHT customers. Focus instead on who are your existing customers, and that way you’ll have a better sense of who is actually buying from you, and who you should be targeting with your campaigns.
Check out your current customer base, ask them the right questions in order to uncover their motivations and needs so that they will buy from you today, not in 2 years from now, or 5 years ago.
3rd Mistake: Not Doing Enough Research or Doing Incorrect Research
Don’t make guesses on what your Buyer Persona should be, but research this in detail. Make sure to look for a large enough sample size of current customers, and ask them enough questions to get all of the data you need to setup a complete profile. Talk to them in person or over the phone, or send them a survey with relevant questions. Also look to those people who bought from a competitor, and those who are in all phases of the buyer funnel. You’ll find out a lot from those who haven’t yet purchased as well, and will be able to improve your campaigns from the very beginning of the buyer’s journey through to the end. Talk to your sales and marketing team, talk to current and past customers (if they’re still relevant), and look at trends and analytics data.
4th Mistake: Including Irrelevant Data
Don’t just ask your current sales and marketing teams what they think fits your Buyer Persona or look to all the anecdotes that they may be able to provide. This could end up resulting in a very one-sided perspective and have you missing out on many key aspects of the profile.
Ask the right types of open-ended questions so that you get a thorough understanding of your buyers, and don’t include irrelevant facts like where they go to school or whether they’re male or female (unless this is directly applicable to your product or services). For example, no one cares what kind of ice cream someone likes (unless you’re an ice cream company). Also, don’t get bogged down on what your persona picture looks like.
Keep in mind that you’re creating these Buyer Personas in order to be able to create appropriate content and campaigns to attract potential customers.
5th Mistake: Not Including Negative Personas
While you’re creating your personas, it’s also important to figure out your negative personas, or those that DON’T buy from you or aren’t a good fit customer. This will help further optimize your content creation and marketing campaigns. Speak to customers who had low satisfaction with your product or service, or those who had a low average sale price, weren’t a cultural fit, or aren’t likely to be a repeat purchaser of your products or services.
Summary
To summarize, when creating your Buyer Personas, common mistakes include:
Creating Too Many Personas
Not Profiling REAL Buyers
Not Doing Enough Research or Doing Incorrect Research
Including Irrelevant Data
Not Including Negative Personas
Now that you know more about what common mistakes to avoid, make sure to check out our recent blog posts covering more useful Buyer Persona tips.
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