A buyer persona is a research-based and semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. Buyer personas describe your ideal customers, their days, the challenges they face, and how they make decisions. It's based on actual data about your existing customers, market research, and assumptions. It helps you understand and relate to an audience that you want to market your products and services.

Buyer personas are also called customer, marketing personas, or profiles, but the purpose is the same. It helps businesses understand and empathize with their customers to better acquire and serve them. Sometimes businesses can have several buyer personas. For example, suppose the user of your product or service needs to get the approval of other people before making a purchase. In that case, each individual in that decision will be a separate persona. They will have different criteria for evaluating your product, and you'll need different strategies to address those needs.

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Negative Buyers Persona

While a buyer persona represents your ideal customer, a negative — or exclusionary persona represents who you don't want as a customer.

It can be:

• Professionals who are too advanced for your service or product.
• Students who are only in contact with your content for some research or knowledge.
• Potential customers who are too expensive for the company to acquire.

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Why is it important to have a buyer persona?

Buyer persona should be at the heart of any marketing strategy. If you can't connect with your potential customers in a relevant manner, you will quickly lose their trust and interest. Once you have lost someone's trust and interest, it's hard to get that back. You just can't make a second first impression!

A clear understanding of what people are looking for when they find your brand will help you create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. 

Also, it can be helpful to go beyond finding different motivations. You should think about the roles that these customers have in their organizations, including their budgets and background experience. The more information you can find about your persona, the easier it will be to imagine this person that you are selling to.

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How to create your buyer's persona?

Working on a buyer persona involves going back over your sales records to gain all the information and a clear picture of the type of person who patronizes your brand. Try to answer several key questions about this type of customer, and it will help you find the pain points and motivations that caused them to buy your brand's products. These in-depth questions alone will help you notice things you hadn't before.

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Try this list first:

• What is their role in their organization or business?
• What is their budget for a week\month\year or particularly for your product or service?
• What is the main problem they are experiencing now?
• What about their main pain points?
• What do they want to accomplish with their purchase?
• What motivates them in life?

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Try to collect such information by checking your customers and market research. Also, it will be helpful to speak directly with your past customers and ask them what brought them to the business. Interview and survey customers to learn what matters most to them, fill in any blanks, and create a complete picture. Aim to make 3-5 personas.

Buyer personas will help you adapt critical aspects of your marketing. Defining the types of people who benefit from your solutions and the challenges you help them solve is crucial in your efforts to attract and retain customers.

Buyer personas are very helpful for brands to understand who they are selling to and what will work best. Take time to think about your customers and pinpoint the types of people you need to target to enhance your marketing efforts. Then, match your personas to their buyer's journey to create targeted marketing campaigns.