SurveyMonkey

As discussed in our post on researching buyer personas a few weeks ago, in order to truly understand who your ideal, target customers are, you need to talk to your current customers and non-customers.  A great way to gather insights is via a small number (5 – 10 questions) of high quality conversations with your contacts list.  If you have the relationships with your contacts to be able to have a telephone call to get these answers, that’s fantastic.  Otherwise, there are a number of survey tools that can also help, such as SurveyMonkey – an affordable, online survey builder that can help you create, design and send any type of survey, from simple to sophisticated.  It integrates with MailChimp and Eventbrite, so you can easily send your questions through channels you’re already familiar with, and provides easy to read reports and analytics of the responses you receive.

HubSpot’s “MakeMyPersona“

Labeled “The Awesome Buyer Persona Word Doc Generator”, HubSpot’s tool is made for inbound marketing professionals, and helps you customize everything from your buyer’s name and occupation to their company details and decision-making abilities.  This free, easy-to-use wizard walks you step-by-step through every question you need to answer to build your Buyer Personas.

Up Close & Persona

This is another free buyer persona tool developed with B2B marketing in mind.  In B2B marketing, creating a buyer persona is key to understanding your audience. Really using that persona can help your B2B company realize its full potential and speak to the needs and goals of your prospects. Going beyond general demographics to fully identify with the persona as an individual will allow you to personalize your message, focus on a niche and match goals.

Personapp

Personapp allows you to create (for free!) and share quick, lightweight personas using a simple lean framework. Customize your creations with details like customer behaviors, demographic specifics, and long-term buying goals. Much like HubSpot’s persona tool within their marketing platform, you can even add avatars to your personas to help your team identify with potential customers.

Using an in-depth buyer persona tool is the best way to help your inbound marketing team conceptualize your businesses’ ideal and target customers and clients. The better your sales and marketing teams can identify with a customer, the greater their chances of converting those leads into revenue-generating sales.

To get a copy of your free guide to creating buyer personas, click the image below.