The first step in making a sale is knowing who you’re selling to. If you don’t know who your ideal customers (buyer personas) are, then you can’t adapt your website to them. This will prevent your site from doing its job and making sales for your company.

A buyer persona is summarized representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. That sounds pretty handy, doesn’t it?

Creating Your Buyer Personas

1. Look through your list of clients and prospects, and find the patterns. You may provide services to a general group of small businesses, or maybe you only service a niche of the consumer market. Figure out which groups you’re already successfully selling too.
2. Create a list of good and bad clients that fall into the groups you defined. Ask if they would be willing to provide their opinions about your business. Most will be flattered and more than happy to help.
3. Create an interview script with questions on their demographics, role, challenges, how they imagine success, and the reasons they chose you. This post from Hubspot provides 20 questions that you can use.
4. Conduct your interviews and take good notes. Don’t ask leading questions to make them say what you want to hear and don’t give away the answers. A little silence after a question gives them time to think and puts on a touch of pressure that keeps their answers authentic.
5. Distill all of your interview notes into 2-5 buyer personas. To create these, try out Hubspot’s buyer persona creation template.
6. Use your buyer personas. Look at what they like about your company and do more of that. Also, find ways to stop doing what they don’t like. And, ensure your website messaging clearly shows that you understand their challenges and have a solution for them.

Creating buyer personas will take you about 8-12 hours. But, they’re one of the highest ROI marketing assets you could ever have and it’s an essential part of your branding.

Ready to create your buyer personas?

Buyer personas can provide a huge boost to your sales and brand. It will also help you provide better service to your existing client base. If you’re ready to get started with buyer personas, we would be happy to chat. We’ll take you through the process so you can start seeing results.