As soon as you start marketing a business, you’ll likely hear the words “buyer persona.” These customer profiles can help marketers focus their efforts. Fortunately, the widespread availability of buyer persona tools makes building these profiles easier. This article explores the business value of customer personas and identifies several top buyer persona tools that could benefit your business.
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a fictional profile you build to understand a customer. You’ll typically work with more than one buyer persona to market your product or service. Each will be an amalgamation of various attributes for a target audience captured in an individual persona.
You create a buyer persona after thorough research. It’s not just you and your team sitting down and brainstorming what you think your customers might be like. Buyer personas are also called customer or marketing personas or profiles. They typically cover:
- Demographics (e.g., age, gender, income, relationship status, education)
- Professional data: (e.g., job position, company, industry, responsibilities, tools they use, who do they report to, how do they measure success)
- Values (e.g., what is important to them professionally and personally, what drives their decision-making)
- Pain points (e.g., what issues does that person face, what need do they have to address)
- Goals (e.g., what do they dream of accomplishing, what do they want the product or service to do for them)
- Buying process (e.g., do they have to get a committee’s buy-in, will they shop online or in-store, are they more of a daytime or evening shopper)
- Common objections (e.g., what might this customer use as a reason not to buy from your business)
These are standard elements of a buyer persona. Yet, your business may also have its sections. Personas often entail a story-telling component that captures a day in that person’s life. This technique helps the people using the persona to connect with that fictional identity. Adding photographs also help to make the persona more real to your users.
In an article dissecting what makes a persona great, Hubspot offers three real-life examples of buyer personas that customers use.
Why are buyer personas valuable?
Well-researched buyer personas give you a clear idea of your ideal customers. You will have a straightforward document outlining your customer’s identities, along with their challenges, goals, buying habits, and more. These profiles can keep you from talking to the customer (e.g., “Look what we do!”). Instead, personas help you to think about what the customer wants or needs and why to build trust and a long-term relationship.
The buyer persona can help you:
- Align marketing, sales, product development, and customer support
- Develop product roadmaps
- Focus keyword research
- Plan marketing strategy
- Craft content
- Build customer rapport
- Engage on social channels
- Prioritize budget allocation
Types of buyer persona
Just as there is no one buyer persona template, there is no consensus on the types of buyer persona. Some sources will tell you there are seven core buyer types. Others focus on four or six. It can also depend on whether you’re dealing with B2B or B2C or its e-commerce or bricks and mortar.
In e-commerce, for example, you’ll often hear about four types of buyer persona:
- Competitive: will make quick, logic-based decisions
- Spontaneous: makes decisions quickly
- Humanistic: makes more emotional decisions
- Methodical: does exhaustive research beforehand
While we’re talking about buyer persona types, it also makes sense to address some common misconceptions about these useful customer profiles.
Buyer persona vs. target audience: Is there a distinction?
A target audience refers to a group of people. The buyer persona is a fictional portrait of just one member of your target audience. Think about the difference in cinematic terms. The buyer persona is the close-up of a single character where we can see the sweat on their upper lip. A target audience could be represented as a wide-frame crowd scene.
What is the difference between buyer persona and market segmentation?
The buyer persona is a specific individual profile. It is a qualitative story that captures the personality and demographics of the representative hypothetical buyer.
On the other hand, market segmentation is a quantitative effort to distinguish a group of buyers. You might identify your core market segment (the people who want your product or service now) or a growth market segment (the buyers you could take steps to appeal to in the future).
You’ll still research to complete market segmentation, but the result differs. You’re looking at the data to quantify who you can market to now or where you could find new opportunities.
Types of Buyer Persona Tools
There are several buyer persona tools out there for both B2B and B2C users. This section discusses the many persona generators available to help you craft your customer personas.
Live Persona by Delve AI
Delve’s AI-powered tool uses your Google Analytics data to extract personal information for your website or social users. You’ll get a persona automatically segmented based on their behavior, psychographics, demographics, geography, and transactions. Personas are also auto-updated to help you keep up with changing buyer behaviors.
Pros
- Automated, AI-generated personas
- Saves you time researching
- You can also generate competitor user personas
- B2B and B2C
Cons
- The persona is entirely derived from Google Analytics
Pricing
- A free, lite plan is available
- Other business plan options are available for $89, $199, or $549 per month.
- Pay annually and save 20%.
HubSpot — Make My Persona
In the Make My Persona tool from HubSpot you follow easy steps to create your own customer profiles. You’ll provide a name and select an avatar to start. Then you’ll use sliders, check boxes, and drop-downs to fill in the template basics. Along the way, HubSpot offers input into why each step is important. HubSpot also offers free six templates and an informational guide.
Pros
- Ease of use
- Specifically designed for B2B users
- You can add a variety of your own sections
- Make as many online personas as you need
Cons
- Not a lot of graphic options
- You cannot edit PDF or word format personas
Pricing
- Free
SEMrush Buyer Persona Template
SEMrush offers unlimited and user-friendly templates. You can use their wizard to select an image for your persona and choose your template option. The three options are default, B2B, and user persona. You then get sections to fill in online, such as demographics, bio, frustrations, motivations, and more. Each section has a pop-out window where you can learn more about what that section is about, where to get the info, and how to use it.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Default, basic templates
- Can customize fields
Cons
- More B2B focused
Pricing
- Free
Xtensio
Xtensio offers a wide range of business content templates; the persona templates are just part of their library. You can start with free templates for three different types of persona and fill in bio, goals, frustrations, motivations, and demographics.
Pros
- Convenient and user-friendly design
- Your plan gets you access to many more sharable business templates
Cons
- Bare bones template compared to competitors
- The free plan doesn’t let you save documents or export quality files
Pricing
- Free Plan
- $8 per member per month for Basic Plan
- $16 per member per month for Pro Plan
- From $60 per month for Company Plan
- Save up to 40% with annual plans
UXPressia
UXPressia offers four different templates to start. You can autogenerate names and images and choose from preexisting personality types for the persona to save time. There are also collaboration tools such as text and voice comment posting, stickers, and discussion threads. This tool offers both B2B and B2C persona creation and you can incorporate journey mapping.
Pros
- User-friendly design
- Easily sharable
- Can collaborate with other users in real-time
Cons
- Limited customizations available
Pricing
- Free and paid
- $16 per month per user for the Starter plan
- $36 per month per user for the Pro plan
- Enterprise pricing is also available
- Paying annually reduces rates
How to Create Better Buyer Personas for Your Business
An excellent buyer persona represents your core customer. This fictional compilation of buyer traits can inform decisions many business areas make. As a result, the better your buyer persona, the more value you can generate from these documents.
Do your research
Get to know your customers by conducting surveys, holding interviews, and mining your current database and customer relationship management tools. Read your customer testimonials, online feedback, and social media channels to see what people say about your business. Look for patterns and trends to help inform your personas.
Reviewing what your competitors are doing and who they are addressing can also help you shape your personas. Identifying the top searched content in your industry can also help you see what buyers are looking for and their questions.
Talk to your people
Customer service interacts with the customer differently than sales or product development. It can be helpful to interview members of your business team. Ask them about their values, goals, challenges, values, and fears. This can help you flesh out your personas.
Consider customers you don’t want
It can be useful also to spend some time thinking about the customers you don’t want to reach. This might be because they are in the wrong industry. Or they will require too much time or money to support. Or you don’t have the budget to extend to that buyer yet.
Making choices to identify your target customer right now can help you be a good steward of business resources. You can always revisit these potential persona groups down the road.
Revisit your buyer personas
Don’t take a set-and-sit approach to buyer personas. You can expect to learn more that helps you tweak the profiles. At the same time, your ideal customer will change as your business and industry evolve.
Ensure your buyer persona documents get refreshed to reflect new insights so that they can continue to have value for your business.
Use Buyer Persona Tools to Refine Your Marketing
No matter the size of your business or your industry, it can make sense to take the time to work with buyer persona tools. Whether filling in a free template online or digging deep into the paid template software, building a buyer persona forces you to think about the audience you’re going after. This can help you to engage better and empathize with your potential customer and make that connection that leads to a sale.
The buyer persona is just one piece of a successful marketing effort. Read our article on developing a great marketing plan to get the basics on that essential document too.