Importance Of Knowing Your Buyers Profile And Buyers Persona

There is plenty of evidence that startups have ineffective digital marketing strategy due to the misconceptions on understanding buyer behaviour & segmenting them.

The sad truth is that most startups have no clue about their buyers’ profile & buyers persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer; a buyer profile represents the type of company that would be a good fit for your product or services. A buyer persona is used primarily in the advertising and marketing industry. They translate it as an ideal customer.

The portrait of this perfect buyer is created with imagination based on research data and experience. A buyer profile is a more accurate description (likely a company that you would like to do business with) which include company size, industry, budget, etc… Buyer profile is the term primarily used in sales.

Deep buyer understanding is the first great skill of a successful startup founder

Startups need to be stubborn on the promise of delivering buyers delight but flexible on experiment and solutions which can help in the engagement.

What that means for you as a startup founder is that you must have complete knowledge about your buyers, who they are and what they want. If you don’t, you risk having your marketing dollars lost in the promotions and digital advertising. To deliver on the promise of delighting the buyer, the more you know about them, the more likely you’ll design a value proposition that answers their priorities.

The critical difference to understand between buyers profile and buyers persona comes down to quantitative vs qualitative data: what you can count vs what you observe. Both are an essential set of data with a unique purpose which can help to sell and delight your buyer.

Buyers profile explains what companies and titles to target. Buyers persona describes how.

What is the benefit of creating a buyer persona and buyer profile? You’ll save a lot of time and money. It’s pretty simple.

To create a buyer persona, identify the following type of information:

• Who are they?
• Where can you find them most often?
• What is their job role & responsibilities?
• What do they do daily? How do they spend their day?
• What are their primary views on social, religious, political and economy?
• What are their life objectives? What are their goals?
• Where do they seek information?
• What’s important to them in their purchase decision?
• What are their most common filters or objections during purchase?

To create a buyer profile, identify the following type of information:

• What industry vertical they belong
• What is the size of the company
• What are their procurement budgets
• What kind of selling companies do they like to work?
• What their buying cycle
• What is their payment process and terms
• What is their frequency of purchase
• What are the top 3 reasons for them to purchase from your company
• How can your product or service help them with their goals
• How are they achieving their goals currently

Buyer personas give real-life context to buyer profiles and creating them gives startup founders the insight they need to connect the dots and understand the situations and challenges buyers experience on their way towards a purchase.

Understand buyers journey and then plan the messaging and communication.

[The article was first published on LinkedIn and has been republished with permission.]