It is no secret to anyone that, in terms of marketing and advertising, understanding the buyer is essential, both for the development of products, as well as for the generation of content that will guide the acquisition of new customers. Since, to achieve success, one of the most important factors lies in having a true and reliable image of potential buyers.
That is why, over time, it has been affirmed that it is highly relevant to define the potential customer of a company and This is accomplished through the famous concept from “target”. However, since this term brings together a group of people without own identity, now too it is recommended to create a buyer persona.
Because, a buyer persona of your ideal client goes much further and it is not only focused on a specific market niche Taking into account that, it is a concept that expands the spectrum in order to specify what are the motivations of potential customers. Then, we explain what it is and detail more information of interest.
What are the target and the buyer persona and how are the two figures different?
Basically the English word "target" translates to "target" and in the marketing environment, it is defined as the potential audience of a certain business. Considering that, the knowledge of the market and the community you are targeting, is essential to achieve success and, therefore, you must guide your decisions and actions based on it. In this way, it is a terminology that can also be associated with the "buyer persona", although they present certain differences.
Taking into account that, a buyer persona of your ideal client refers to the stereotype or semi-fictional representation of your final consumer. That is, of those people who you would like to attract and delight with your product or service. Being a more specific concept than the target. To define and carry out an optimal marketing strategy that provides positive results, it is decisive to know how the target and the buyer persona are different. This, in order that such strategy is more profitable and effective.
Therefore, below, we mention the most important dissimilarities in question:
- While, the target or target audience is a more generic concept because gathers a number of people without their own identity; the buyer people they have a name, surname and even a face, so the marketing action can be personalized, unlike the target.
- Typically, the target selects communities defined with respect to sex, income or age, for example. However, the buyer persona defines the needs of the final consumer based on your background, personality, behavior, doubts, complaints, goals, etc..
- Given that the target centralizes its work in a single segment of the established public, tends to forget about other equally or more profitable sections. Unlike the buyer person who manages to take advantage of various segments of the potential audience.
- Thanks to the fact that the buyer persona is a concept in which other particularities are added that are added to the target, enables a much clearer mental and emotional image of the potential customer. While, the target fails to reveal this.
Example
- Target or target audience: Men and women, aged between 20 and 30 years, have average monthly earnings of 3,500 eurosThey are single and have an engineering degree.
- Buyer person: Pablo Contreras, has 28 years old, is a self-employed graduate, his monthly income is 4,000 euros, he is married, he loves to travel to heavenly places, he has always wanted to do a master's degree outside his home country and he is looking for employment opportunities in Europe or Latin America.
As you will see, the target is in charge of studying a group of people with common characteristics for define a target audience and direct the marketing strategy based on this information. On the other hand, the buyer persona deals with making a more personalized and exhaustive analysis, in order to know the customer's needs and thus, being able to base your actions on them.
Why is it important to always have the target of your niche identified?
Although it is a more abstract and generalized term, it certainly also It is highly relevant to have defined and identified the target of your niche when carrying out a marketing strategy. Since, otherwise, you will carry out actions aimed at everyone, without reaching your ideal client while the effectiveness of said strategy it looks diluted. In that sense, you should focus on knowing what is the group of people likely to be interested in your product or service and with more possibility of making a purchase.
This, through a segmentation process that gives you the possibility to optimize the market by specifying the group of potential consumers. Thanks to that, you will have the advantage of reducing costs, since you can focus on the ideal audience and optimize the campaign budget, it will not be necessary to carry out trial and error tests. Added to that, you will save time because you should not analyze in depth the public in question.
Even if you focus on always having the target of your niche identified, you will take advantage of the possibility of consolidate the engagement of your customers, since you will know what they are needing or wanting. With which, you can promote the creation of a strong bond between your brand and the target, Thus capturing greater attention and interest from the community.
Therefore, in short, knowing your ideal audience is essential for have the ability, as a brand or company, to satisfy your requirements or needs correctly, as well as designing a series of contents focused on said group of people. Whereas, this is the best way to achieve success through your own efforts.
Learn step by step how to identify your target audience on social networks
Although it is true, today, one of the most helpful platforms that there is to attract potential customers is social networks. Therefore, it is valuable Know how to identify your target or target audience.
Through these channels and here, we indicate how to carry it out, step by step:
Establish the main characteristics of what you offer
First of all, it is essential define which with the particularities of greatest interest of the product or service you want to provide to your potential customers. Since, this will let you know who may be interested, so start an effective marketing strategy.
For that, we recommend you answer the following questions, based on your product or service to offer: What type is it? How should it be used? What is your base price? And once these data are identified, you will have a clearer idea of what type of users would want to buy or contract what you are offering.
Specify what type of audience you want to captivate
Once you establish the main characteristics of your products or services, you will have the possibility of define what kind of clients you can attract through them. Whereas, it is essential to satisfy your needs and be able to meet your expectations correctly.
In this step, too it is ideal to point out if you want to target a much more specific audience, within the market niche you are analyzing. Assuming that, to do it effectively, you will have to add a variable within your offer, in order to capture the attention of such people. That is to say, a differentiating factor.
Analyze your clients and those of your competition
Now, thirdly, it's time to go through a completely key observation process to identify your target audience. So, it starts with analyze all those users who have purchased any of the products or services you are providing. Mainly focusing on what kind of people they are, how they express themselves, what their age ranges are, etc.
After getting an idea of who your customers are, it will be time to study the competition or, to the buyers of the competition, specifically. In that sense, you will know what kind of clients do they have and what are their common characteristics. In addition, see what are the profiles that follow your competition in social networks, so investigate what customers are looking for and be able to adapt it to your business, in order to offer you a better experience.
Perform a segmentation of your market
All the previous aspects clarified, it's time to work directly with what the market gives you. For that, we recommend focusing on the age range at which your product or service seems most interesting. Too, defines whether it serves men, women, or children more and investigate what are the greatest needs of such people.
Added to that, You can also base yourself on where they are residing, how much money can you spend depending on their average monthly income, what they work for, etc. In such a way, it will be much easier to segment the audience that you have established, in principle, for your business.
Now, we distinguish that the main segmentation aspects that will allow you to define your target are the following (above any other):
- Sex: You must know if your product or service can only be focused on the public maleto female or if possible direct it to both of them. It also analyzes whether it is indicated for children or youth, just like for the whole family.
- Age: According to a age range, your target will belong to a particular generation and the marketing actions to be carried out will depend on it. Taking into account that, it may be the Baby Boomers (1946 – 1964), generation X (1965 – 1978), Millennials or generation Y (1979 – 1996) and generation Z (Since 1997).
- Behavior: Although they are not easy to establish, the behavior criteria of your target audience it allows you segment Better the market you will be targeting. Whether depending on the type of job, the degree of training, the use of mobile devices, etc.
Take advantage of web analytics tools
Having done all of the above, you can also help yourself with web analytics tools, with which it is very practical to analyze certain important data about your target, to better map your marketing strategy. One of the most recognized services for that, is "Google Analytics" that manages to measure different aspects of websites to know where users come from and what devices they use, for example.
You can also try Facebook Insights which is a tool that allows you to know very well what your target is, through the types of profiles that visit your account, the scope of your posts and the purchasing behavior of users. There is even a solution called Surveymonkey that will help you better identify your target audience creating surveys.
List of the best tools to identify your target on social networks
As we mentioned in the previous part, there are web analytics tools that They are ideal to identify your target more easily. However, among the many options available, most users do not know which ones to choose to carry out such a study on social platforms.
Therefore, here we detail two of them:
Facebook Insights
As its name implies, it is a tool associated with Facebook which basically allows continuous monitoring regarding the interaction that a certain profile or account throws on this social network. Added to this, there you will see information based on your actions, visits, views, interactions, followers, reach and other data of interest.
Now, with respect to the followers, it gives you the possibility of choose specific periods to carry out a thorough analysis and even compare the performance that your page shows, in order to work towards identifying your perfect target. Even, you will be able to obtain data related to the interactions of users with your post and discover their reactions or comments.
Twitonomy.com
If you want to base your strategy marketing and the study of your target audience through TwitterWe recommend using this tool. Well, through it, it will be easy get detailed information and analysis of anyone's tweets, like browsing, searching and filtering data on the people who follow you. Inclusive, allows you to control their interactions with other users (mentions, favorites or retweets).
Additionally, you can count on an exhaustive web analytics report from your followers, monitor each of the movements carried out by the users you choose and see details about your lists of Twitter, the most popular tweets published, interest statistics and engagement data. Taking into account that, the details will be visualized by means of simple graphics to understand.
Discover step by step how to create your buyer persona to enhance the effectiveness of your strategies
On the other hand, it is also decisive create your buyer persona effectively, in order to further enhance your marketing strategies and achieve all the objectives set, without wasting time, money or effort in vain.
But, for that, it is essential to take into account each one of the steps to follow during said process, which are:
Get real data of the type of buyer person you want to create
The first step to follow is to find real information based on the type of buyer persona you want to create and to do it correctly, it is recommended base this on the objective you have set in your marketing strategy.
Generally, it is ideal to focus on the following:
- Labor data: For example, if it is employed or unemployed, in which sector does it move and the role it plays in your company.
- Demographic data: As their age, sex, class Social and location.
- Personal information: Whether you are single, home or with a partner, if you have children or not, if you live alone or accompanied.
- Information about your goals: If you have vital goals or what are your most desired dreams.
- Challenges: It is decisive to know if have problems at work or not, as well as determining if you have financial difficulties.
- Behavior: You have to get the type of content you usually consume, the most common hours in which you consume the most content on social networks and the devices you use to surf the net.
In addition to that, we also advise you to answer the following questions, consciously and precisely:
- Why could they interest your products or services to the buyer person what are you creating
- Than type of product or service Is it more appropriate for the types of target that exist, in general?
- Than doubts could have about what you offer?
- In which social platforms has a greater presence?
- What others products or services Do you enjoy being in relationships with yours, both directly and indirectly?
Use adequate methods for your research
Among the many methods of obtaining information that exist today, it is valuable that you choose to resort to those that allow you to have a greater precision at the time of create or build your buyer persona.
Taking into account that, according to several experts, the best ways to do research of this type are the following:
- Polls (can make them and distribute them with the help of online tools).
- Interviews (They usually take place at employees, customers and target audiences, in all cases).
- Statistical analysis (based on information provided by your social networks, you can obtain statistical reports through certain tools that help you establish a perfect buyer persona).
- Market studies (With all information flow present on the Internet, You have the possibility to carry out a market study based on your niche).
It is appropriate to highlight that each of these research methods they must be applied depending on the objective with which you will create your buyer persona. Since, there are tactics that serve more for one type of profile than for another, due to the kind of information they yield.
Get your research going
After defining the type of buyer person that you have to create and establish a certain research method, it is time to put your research into action and choose the community from which you will request the information you require.
Of course, this will be carried out according to the objective for which you want to specify the buyer persona of your ideal client. Thus, at this point, it is essential to take into account a series of recommendations, given that Research should not be done in any way to obtain excellent results.
These tips are:
- Always focus on do interviews in a personalized way and not in groups. Since, if you choose to run them in a group, it is likely that you will find information manipulated by a single subject and, therefore, the data obtained will not be reliable.
- Don't use premium incentives, because with this you could negatively influence the responses obtained. Therefore, it is valuable to seek incentives according to your sector that do not distort the information collected when offering them.
- As far as possible, try to make it easy for the people who will be interviewed. Therefore, keep in mind that you are not taking an exam and choose to ask simple questions to answer through different routes to give people various alternatives.
Proceed to create your buyer persona
Finally, when you have all the necessary data to create the profile in question, it is time to organize this information and, through it, build the buyer persona of your potential client. Taking into account that, a simple way to order this data, is answering basic questions like: what, who, how and why.
Also, for the results to be truly effective, the ideal is develop a buyer persona based on those similar profiles, in order to link them as a single element and thus, be able to concentrate all that spectrum more easily. In other words, you don't have to create a buyer persona for each individual interviewed initially.
List of the best tools to identify your buyer persona
In addition to being able to rely on solutions to identify your target on social networks, you also have the possibility of using tools that allow you to obtain information of interest to build a buyer persona of your ideal client, in a more effective way.
Here are three such alternatives:
Alexa.com
Without a doubt, it is one of the main tools to create a buyer persona, since allows you to analyze all the demographic information of your audience and even that of the public of your competition. Therefore, it serves to have a global idea about the traffic of a website, since you can obtain the reputation and relevance online.
That way, Alexa helps you determine the best strategies and campaigns you can undertake, based on what the competition does. It should be noted that, usually, it also reveals information such as: which one It is the genre that is most interested in what you offer, from which country the visits come from, what is the location of navigation (home, work or school) and the degree of education of people.
Google Analytics
Of course, this famous tool could not be missing Google which has great potential for manage to extract information about your visitors, being of great help to optimize your digital marketing strategies on social networks and websites. As, provides a series of data from the visits you receive, in order to specify if they have a relationship with the buyer persona you have created.
In that sense, it will allow you see the total percentage of the genre that is most interested in your products or services And this can help you find the most appropriate tone for the messages you are addressing to your audience. It also gives you data on the main interests of your potential customers, their age ranges, their location and language. It even allows you to check which social network gets the most traffic.
Empathy Map
This is a perfect graphic tool to get to know your client, thanks to the fact that it is useful to make a correct segmentation of the ideal client. For that, Empathy Map or "Empathy Map" allows you to start by making a definition of the business idea and from that idea, also you can establish the fragment of your perfect client.
Next, it will be time to use the empathy map and know what information of interest is hidden behind the "Customer segment". Since, it is a map that contains several sections with which it will be easier to characterize a person, specifying What do you think or feel, what do you see and hear, what do you constantly do, what are your fears, frustrations and obstacles, what are your greatest needs and desires, etc..