Buyer Persona: Why Is It Important in Product Management? (2021)

Introduction

If you’ve ever wondered ‘What is the definition of a buyer persona in business, it’s simply a fictional profile of a product’s typical customer. Personas are used by product manager to under key traits, challenges, behaviors, responsibilities and goals of end-users.

They are important because when an organization builds and designs products without the users in mind, they end up failing and not succeeding. Businesses build products to solve various challenges and satisfy customers. Buyer personas are a way to help entrepreneurs thoroughly understand their target userbase. Product marketing managers often catalog different buyer persona types when designing products. A common characteristic of the best buyer personas is that they’re built off of real people.

1. What is a Buyer Persona?
2. Goals of Buyer Personas 
3. How to Research Buyer Personas?
4. Characteristics of Good Buyer Personas
5. Buyer Persona Examples

1. What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a profile created for the purpose of understanding and empathizing with customers. Learning about a customer’s requirements is essential in creating products that provide value. There’s a lot of ongoing research in the field of product management that delves into different user segments which helps product managers in constructing well-defined roadmaps.

2. Goals of Buyer Personas 

The main benefits of creating a buyer persona are:

• Understanding why key decisions are made when building products
• Meeting the requirements of target users with every release
• Focusing on features that actually solve problems
• Make updates to product lineups and implement new features without running into any issues

It’s easy to get lost while creating the different types of buyer personas and forget that not all your users are buyers. Your users may try out your products but they won’t buy from you. Here’s a guide that breaks this down in detail. The goal of a buyer persona is to identify and relate to your target users, address their pain points and challenges, and build products that tailor to their varying requirements.

3. How to Research Buyer Personas?

If you’re trying to research buyer personas without talking directly to your users, here are a few ways you can go about it:

Talk to your co-workers – Your coworkers spend a lot of time interacting with prospects and sales leads. You can ask primary persona-building questions and get many buyer persona examples from them.

Ask Online – You can post on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any favourite social media platform to ask for opinions about what you’re looking for. Reviewing popular LinkedIn profiles or reaching out to influencers for feedback are effective strategies too.

Read Market Research Reports – White papers, case studies and market research reports give an excellent snapshot of the industry. Although all the details might not match your buyer persona profiling requirements, it’s a good practice to do since it teaches you how to develop buyer personas while keeping industry challenges and trends in mind.

Try out LinkedIn – Most of your customers hang out on LinkedIn and are asking good questions. You can be a part of the groups they’re in and connect professionally. Check out the similarities you notice and look for popular topics that they’re talking about in common. 

Start Using HubSpot Marketing – HubSpot marketing software will help you gather qualified leads and create better quality content. You can browse through customer catalogues, look at buyer trends online and understand customer behaviours by reviewing the data. Marketing analytics is powerful in this regard.

4. Characteristics of Good Buyer Personas

If it’s your first time learning how to create a buyer persona, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. There are many common characteristics highlighted in good buyer personas. The best ones have a lot of in-depth research backing them up. 

Here is what goes into creating good buyer personas and what you should look out for. 

A) Learning About Your Users

Creating a buyer persona is about learning well about your audience. Asking questions such as what their likes/dislikes are, social media preferences, work background, age, gender, etc. – all these make the first step.

You can use their personal and professional information for qualitative and quantitative research. Take into account the goals and challenges faced by your users as well. A good way to learn about your target users is by conducting interviews, talking to them directly online via email or chat, handing out surveys, and raising support tickets for any queries.

B) Grouping and Target Audience Segmentation

After you have collected enough data about your target users, you’ll have to segment or group your buyer personas. What do we mean by this?

For example, let’s say you’re opening an online restaurant business that caters to customized and homemade meals. Your different buyer personas would involve customers who are working professionals, students, parents, homemakers, teachers etc. Every one of their lifestyle and dietary needs would be different so the meals you cater to them will vary in taste, portion sizes, and delivery timings.

Likewise, understanding the needs of your different user groups will help you in developing and designing product features that work. 

C) Build Buyer Persona Templates

A buyer persona template will help you in creating products that address your users’ painpoints. It’s like a blueprint that guides you when developing products and makes sure you’re on the right track.

Here’s what your buyer persona template should include:

• Basic information and a profile image
• Age, gender, where your users live
• Job title, marital status, number of kids
• Profession, short biography and a personality roadmap

The goal of your persona template is to give you a quick snapshot of your users and understand who they are. You won’t be capturing all the details but get a good rundown of who you are tailoring your products for. Adding images and describing your users’ personalities can help further in fleshing out these profiles.  You can create your very own buyer personal templates using Aha! and they even have a 30-day free trial. 

D) Sharing Your Personas Team Members and Getting Feedback

After fleshing out your buyer persona profiles, it’s crucial to share it with your team members and get feedback. You’ll get unique inputs and realize any gaps in your profiles when you share these with your teams. Linking your buyer persona with your goals, business initiatives, press releases, and features will help keep your customers at the forefront of your mind when developing new products. 

5. Buyer Persona Examples

Here are a few buyer persona examples you may want to consider when designing your own buyer personas:

• Anti-personas – These personas are the exact opposite of your marketing personas. They include people you want to block out from using your products and services. It’s similar to using negative keywords in Google Adwords.
• Detractors – These are people who derail your existing customers from buying or trying out your products. Detractors are popular for making sales go off-rails in the B2B sectors
• Influencers – These are people who may not directly buy your products but can try them out and leave a genuine review. Small business owners get a huge boost in sales from just their word online.

Conclusion

A buyer persona is a one-page document that summarizes your typical user type. However, that’s just an example and good buyer personas involve having different customer types. It’s important the study the elements of a buyer persona before designing them and understand how buyer persona goals align with business characteristics and marketing behaviors. 

Interested to learn all about Product Management from the best minds in the industry? Check out our Product Management Certification. This 6-month-long program takes place online through live instructor-led sessions. It is the only program in India that offers the ‘Bring Your Own Product (BYOP)’ feature so that learners can build their product idea into a full-blown product, and go through an entire Product Development lifecycle. Not only this, but this is the only program in India with a curriculum that conforms to the 5i Framework. Post completion, learners receive a joint certification from the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, and Jigsaw Academy. 

Also Read

• What Is Product Management: An Easy 6 Step Guide