Creating A Buyer Personna

You seem to be confusing demographics with psychographics.

Demographics are used to drive traffic. For example, if you have a product that appeals to baby boomers, you'd only show your ad to people 55 and older.

Psychographics are used when writing copy. What emotion is driving your prospect to look for a solution? What does he think will solve his problem? What does he have to believe to buy?

There's more than one way to determine psychographics. My favorite way is to study the sales copy of my SUCCESSFUL competition.

Alex

Hi Mike,

The whole idea behind the use of personas is based on a fundamental principle in marketing:

Be specific!

The reason why this principle is important is that people are rarely compelled to act based on general concepts or ideas. People in mass find a message more compelling when it is personal and relevant to them, and relevance demands specificity. You have to be specific to deliver a compelling message.

One of the key tactics of marketing is market segmentation. Segmentation is based on the "be specific" principle. Using Personas is just an extension of the basic market segmentation tactic where you identify a very specific audience segment and then tailor your message to that specific market segment. The specific idea behind personas is to focus on a specific segment of your audience.

By speaking to the personally specific needs and desires of a very specific audience segment your message becomes far more compelling to that particular audience segment.

Marketing is a process that is based on testing and analysis.

Ideally, you should be researching your client's targeted market and selecting the most important audience segments to base your persona on so that your message doesn't alienate those important market segments. An excellent way to do this is to analyze your clients marketing analytically data to gather demographic data about current and past customers.

If your client is launching a new business and has no previous customer data, you might consider asking them to run some test marketing campaigns to gather data which you can then use to base your personas on. To get started ask your client what specific audience segments they intend to target.

Once you have an idea of who you are targeting speak to them in your sales copy in voice that is very specific to them, avoid being general, be specific.

As we say in the advertising and marketing business "Speak directly to the audience, about what matters to the audience, in the language of the audience". In other words, make what matters to your target audience the focus of your sales copy. Speak directly to them, make them the subject of your message, not your clients product, service or company.

A persona is just a tool to help you focus your thoughts and ideas while crafting your message. If you don't identify who you are speaking to you can hardly be expected to make them the focus of your marketing message. It's a useful device, but like all tools, it is how you use it that matters the most.

Here's an article that sums it up for you:
https://www.act-on.com/blog/how-to-s...ting-audience/

HTH,

Don Burk

What you're looking for is DATA. Raw data, so you can make your own interpretation of it, with the result of being able to appeal to the major themes and nuances of the market.

There are different ways of getting it.

One is marketing on Facebook, using the analytical tools Facebook gives you, such as targeting lookalike audiences.

#2, build an email list and get it analyzed against "big data". There are lots of services out there that do that. You'll be able to draw buying correlations very quickly.

#3, build a list and then do surveys against it.

#4, the best way is to get an offer out there and get some initial sales and then follow up by phone with your questions. The insights will be amazing and you'll be inspired to optimize your copy using phrases, languages and ideas you picked up.

Again, superior analysis dictates results.

Wow! I am blown away with the wealth of knowledge you guys have. Thank you all for providing such meaningful and actionable responses that I will apply.

Jeff Walker was the guy who turned me on to the power of creating buyer personas in his book Launch. Not to be blunt, but I hated him for it for a couple of weeks.

In a decade and half making a full time living online I never built a single persona.

When I started, I couldn't stand working on them. It seemed like a huge waste of time that I could spend on other projects.

But as I stuck with them, they got much easier to create. I guess Jeff Walker knew something about IM that I didn't.

Go figure, right?

For a "high level overview" on how to create a Customer Avatar, it doesn't get much better than this...