A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. And when you’re building your buyer persona it’s important that you are as realistic as possible. By that we mean the closer your persona is to your real customers, the more useful you’ll find them.
Buyer personas - sometimes referred to as audience personas or user personas - play a vital role in your website design process. Personas keep your web project focused on what really matters, the needs of the customer.
All your marketing activities are customer-centric, so why should it be any different for the web design process? Your website should be inspired by the customer’s motivation to buy. And if it’s not, then what purpose does your website have?
Buyer personas need to be created for every business, regardless of your industry. So in case you’re not already convinced, here are a few more reasons why you should create your persona before building your website.
If you don’t know who your audience is you can’t build a website that is going to perform well. It’s really that simple. If you go into the web design process without a persona, you’re almost going into it blind. Whatever plan you have for your website, it’s never going to return the results you’re hoping for if it’s not built with your audience persona in mind.
The only way you can keep the entire workforce involved in the success of the business is to share your goals, how you’re planning on getting there and who you’re targeting. If they don’t know who makes up your audience, everyone will be working in different directions.
Making sure everyone understands what your ideal customer looks like helps the team stay focused, striving toward the same business goal. It's one of the best ways to encourage a collaborative team dynamic.
To keep your business fresh and competitive within your sector, it’s important to stay on top of user trends. Trends could include how users consume your content to how they navigate around your website. Simply put, if all employees have the same picture of your audience in their mind, the more targeted and relevant their ideas will be.
Building a buyer persona helps keep your business at the forefront of its industry.
The process of building your personas helps you uncover demographic traits you might not have realised your audience had. You could discover new ways to market your product or service to them through your website.
While you’re gathering insight, you might even uncover challenges your audience exhibits that you were unaware of before. It is this insight gathered from your customer base that is useful in helping you determine the best possible marketing message through your website.
It was reported by Demand Gen that buyer personas helped tech giant Intel surpass campaign benchmarks by an overwhelming 75%. It’s case studies like these that highlight the positive impact building your personas early in the process can have on your wider marketing tactics.
Your business might lend itself to more than one persona but it’s important you focus on building one at a time. It's a good idea to focus on building the persona who is more likely to bring in the most revenue.
Here at Northern Wolf, we can create buyer personas for you as part of our web design process. Get in touch for your free web design consultation today.
