Wouldn’t it be great if you had a profile of who your exact customer was? Imagine all of the things you could do with that information. You could do research specifically on that ideal customer. You could design your marketing creatives and programs around exactly what that ideal customer likes and is receptive to. You could get rid of the fluff and only target those leads who fit that ideal customer profile. No more wasting time having to call, email or meet everyone…you only seek to interact with those who meet that profile. Sounds great huh? Sounds like something impossible or that you have to pay tons of money to a consultant to develop a lengthy report right? Wrong.
This “ideal customer profile”, as I refer to it, is actually called a “buyer persona”. A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents your audience – an archetype of the ideal customer. The word “buyer” actually represents whoever your target customer is. As Adele Revella explains:
The goal for buyer personas is to make them so real and persuasive that the company will be willing to take direction from them…Their [the buyer persona] purpose is to tell a story to internal audiences about how a particular type of buyer views the decision to buy the company’s product, service or idea. The story must be real, even though the persona is not. Persona developers need to continously interact with buyers to keep the story real, reiterating the buyers’ perspective whenever an internal decision loses its focus.
Want to see what a buyer persona looks like?
David Meerman Scott highlights Kadient, a SaaS application provider, who have successfully implemented buyer personas. To check out a couple of the buyer personas they have developed, check out David’s post.
How can you develop your own buyer persona(s)?
While there are a bunch of ways to develop your buyer personas, here are just 3 that I think will keep you pretty busy for a little while and will help you to start to gain a better detailed picture of your ideal customer.
1. Analyze you current customer data – If you collect any demographic or user data, analyze to see what your average customer looks like. Of course, the more information you collect during the customer acquisition phase of your sales cycle, the easier this will be to develop a complete picture.
2. Listen to your team – Listen to what your internal sales and marketing team tell you about interactions they have with people about your company’s products or services. Are consistently noticing that they’re talking to a middle-aged woman with kids yelling in the background and who always seems to be in a rush? That’s important to note. You have a lot less time to get your message across with that person then you might with others. Maybe your marketing team runs into the same type of people at every conference you set up a booth at. Again, important to note, analyze and target your messaging towards.
3. Ask for feedback – Ask your customers for feedback on what they would like to see. Did they really like that last website refresh because it made their life easier to find some information because of how busy they are in meetings all day? That’s important to know. Then you need to make your messaging snackable. Marketing delivered to that persona in any other manner will crash and burn because they’re too busy to read it and just delete it or never get around to it.
Have you developed buyer personas at your company? If so, have they been successful? If you’re not using buyer personas at your company, what are you waiting for?
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Photo by: emery.josh
. Back then I was in college studying sociology. While the book made sense, it didn’t really sink 
is a quick and easy read that packs a punch by providing business lessons from the Obama campaign. The way in which Obama led this nearly flawless campaign is a case study which everyone in business can learn something from. These lessons are presented throughout the book along with actionable information that the business reader can take back and use in their organization. The book is organized into 4 parts which summarize how the campaign was run so successfully: Success You Can Believe In, Be Cool, Be Social, and Be the Change. Though I have read and watched a lot about the Obama campaign, I was surprised at some of the stories which are presented in the book. It was very interesting to read how hands-on Obama was and how effectively he developed a strong team that helped him to raise tens of thousands volunteers to help in the effort. I would definitely recommend this to anyone involved in business who are looking for some tips on how they can be a better leader, especially during tough times.
by Deborah Micek and Warren Whitlock serves just this purpose. It is aimed at the user who is considering signing up for the service or is at a beginner level with using it. The authors do an excellent job of providing lists of resources, suggestions directly from the Twitter community, and tips to help you advance your learning curve with the service quickly. Even as an advanced user of the platform, I found the book reminding of little things that I’ve been meaning to do. Due to how fast the service, and resources around Twitter, are changing, the authors are constantly updating their online portal for the book, 
Saving the World at Work
is an interesting read by Tim Sanders on what companies and individuals should and can be doing to make a difference in other ways besides just the bottom line. The book is filled with remarkable stories of how just one person helped someone else out or saved the environment from hundreds of millions of pounds of waste. As Sanders tells these stories, he provides the reader with information on how they can make a difference in their organization or communities. What I like so much about this book is that what Sanders suggests doesn’t take a lot of money to do, it doesn’t even take a lot of time necessarily…it just takes someone stepping up with the want and will to make a difference. As the inside cover states: “Every one of us, regardless of title or position, can inspire our comapnies to change the way they do business, helping them to become a positive force for enriching people, communities, and the environment.”
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