A buyer persona is a representation of an ideal customer based on market research and real data about existing customers. It includes demographic information, behavior patterns, motivations, and goal. Marketing teams use this information to build targeted campaigns and content tailored around the needs of their buyers.
A buyer persona is often confused with a target audience or market segment; however, each term has distinct implications when used in marketing. A target audience refers to the group of people that marketers are attempting to reach with their messaging. Market segments are groups of people who share similar characteristics or behaviors that influence their purchase decisions.
In contrast, buyer personas provide a detailed, actionable description of the ideal customer for a business’s product or service. This description helps inform marketing strategies such as copywriting and campaign targeting while also providing insights into how those strategies should be executed in order to be most effective. Buyer personas can even define how products should evolve over time by revealing emerging needs that customers may have for future offerings.
Buyer personas can be created using both qualitative and quantitative research techniques like surveys, interviews and focus groups to uncover what motivates buyers when they make purchasing decisions. Once these insights have been gathered, they can then be used to create a narrative-style document detailing who the persona is (e.g., job title), what they need (e.g., goals) and why they may choose one product over another (i.e., pain points). This document then serves as a focal point from which all marketing strategies can stem from as it provides crucial data around who marketers should target, what message should resonate with them, where those messages should be seen, etc.
