How comprehensive should a Buyer Persona be? Read it here!

Its difficult to create a buyer persona. Precisely because it involves lots of research. One has to shuffle through internet pages, group discussions, analyst reports and different associations published data to understand the industry trends. For those companies whose audience is not on internet, find it even more difficult to create one such persona. As discussed in my previous blog, one should conduct interviews with the existing customers and those who were in pipeline but later couldn't get converted into business. These are the perfect profiles that will help you to decide which way to follow to reach to ideal customer. 

However as simple as using Facebook or Linkedin too you can get details around your buyer persona. Data is available everywhere, how good you tap into it decides how good you can build the persona.

While every interaction with customer, every search on Google will give you some data pointers to use in persona; few are just obvious tools to explore whether your persona presence is good on internet and if it does then where the customers are and how they are.

One such example is Facebook. Do you have a personal account with facebook? Then you can easily gather the data about your buyer persona. Here are few steps to research your persona profile on facebook. 

• Click on create Ad.
• Once into the Ads manager, go to audience and play with your criteria.
• Image below shows the software developers who are interested in Cloud Computing (if I am building a buyer persona of a could developer). It shows approximately how many people are there on FB with this criteria. 
• Also search for individual profiles with the same interests through common groups to understand buyers well.

You can also undertake similar kind of research on Linkedin.

Here is the self explained picture that shows how good you can use linkedin for persona research :

On Linkedin one can further drill down to company level view of profiles and can gather the approximate number, their qualifications, number of years experience, specific technology and so on. 

Finally, how comprehensive should a buyer persona be? it depends on how good you can find information, how extensive research you can do. 

Here is a quick example of comprehensive buyer persona :

Take a bow and begin your own journey! 

5 rules for developing effective Buyer Persona

Buyer Persona is the first step for company’s #inbound #Marketing strategy. Get the buyer persona right and the strategy falls into place automatically. Get the persona wrong and the marketing strategy will lose the foundation to deliver results. Strategy will not withstand through the thunders and storms of market.

So, in my previous blog I explained why Buyer Persona is essential for any and every type of organization. In this blog, we will see how to develop a buyer persona.  

Buyer Persona is nothing but the resume/profile of an ideal customer. It has to be built from extensive research.

Here are the 5 rules marketing must follow to develop persona. It is also called as User persona, customer persona or buyer persona.

• Begin with your existing customer: Your existing customer’s database can lead you to know how your ideal customers would generally be. It will give you the idea about:

• What is the profession of buyer

• What is the age group

• What need drove them to buy the product

• What keeps them up at night

• How they are judged socially

• Their emotional drivers 

Best way to begin is not by analysing data but interviewing the customer himself. The insights from at least 5 – 10 customers will give clear understanding of why and how.

• Analyse Social Sites: Analyse groups, discussion forums, Linkedin profiles and any other places where target audience frequently visits. The interactions/observations will lead you to understand which channels are viable to reach out to them. It will also give you the perspective around ‘WHY’. If your target audience is not digital savvy then look for community groups, gatherings, social engagements to analyse them.

• Research Research and Research: It’s the only Mantra when you are developing buyer persona. Talk to Prospects, talk to those who denied being your customers. Even furious customers would give insights on which expectations were not met by your product. This will tell you what should be avoided in the messaging or what should specifically be targeted.

• Competition: It’s fine to look at competitors. What’s working for them and what is not. This will help you to decide which way to go. Analysing how the persona messaging is or from where the traffic to website is coming will lead you to create a better persona. Or if your audience is not computer savvy then simply observing why there are lot of walk-ins to the competitor’s stores would also give you insights!! More the observation, better the insights to build persona.

• Revisit persona every quarter: Revisit and confirm whether the persona that you have developed is relevant to current market situation. Check whether the messaging you have developed considering the persona is yielding profits. And make edits wherever needed.

Here is a quick example of buyer persona developed for a health application company whose target customer is a frequent flyer.  

Buyer Persona Example

If you are looking to develop a Buyer Persona for your company, try Hubspot for free templates or simply start adding information by answering 20 questions on

e by one and Hubspot will automatically create a persona for you here : https://www.makemypersona.com/

This is my first post on this blog. And I am excited to begin the journey!! 

Recently I completed Hubspot Inbound Certification Course. As the inbound marketing practice has been implemented in my organisation, my day to day work involves around creating and executing inbound marketing. Since I have the work experience in inbound marketing and have also recently done the certification, thought this blogpost must focus on something I am really passionate about and advocate a lot - Inbound Marketing!

There are ample posts and information about Inbound Marketing on the internet. So I thought it will be a good idea to start with basic questions like where can it be applied? How can it be applied? and a very frequently asked questions when Entrepreneur decides to take a look at it from his/her own business perspective. Please look at this post from Inbound Marketing in Indian Market context.

Q : I have a restaurant in the middle of the city and I am getting walk in customers to my restaurant. Do I need any inbound marketing? Why inbound marketing?

A : In my opinion, inbound marketing is nothing but a documented effort towards generating leads in the world of ever changing technology that has led to lifestyle change for the end customer. In other words, you are looking at the different ways to reach out to your customer in an organised manner. Simply put, Inbound Marketing is to Document whom you would like to target, decide how you need to reach out to them and use technology to target them. There are many other aspects too to it but lets stick to this basic aspect to begin with. 

Coming back to the question, if you want to increase the walk in customers to your restaurant, establish your name in the market and generate word of mouth about your restaurant in the industry then yes - Inbound marketing will help you do exactly that!! 

Irrespective of which business you are into, building an inbound marketing strategy helps. Let that business be a manufacturing business, food and beverages chain or a small coaching class getting run in a small area of the city. Your inbound strategy will help you decide where to focus, how to go for it and how to earn trust of your customers. Again, inbound helps you make changes time and again to keep doing iterations, introspections and come up with better version of your strategy. 

Q. I have a small business and I wish to promote it through Social Media. Can Inbound Marketing help me?

A. Yes, of course! In fact if you are creating a page on Facebook, Twitter and wish to start generating leads through it then Inbound Marketing Strategy is your first destination to get there. Simply having a facebook page, twitter account or any other social media presence would not help. You need to know whom you would like to reach out to, how to utilise these channels (like social media) to generate leads and once leads are generated, how to use them to generate business. 

Just creating a social media page will not help unless it has been put to work in the right direction towards a specified goal. 

Q. Inbound Marketing is not for small businesses. Only the companies having a good turnover can be benefited from an inbound marketing. 

A. Thats a wrong perception. Inbound marketing has nothing to do with the turnover of your company. It is all about how you define your end customers in terms of their behaviour, what keeps them awake at night (and much more) , channels through which you decide to reach out to them, how you would like to keep them delighted and at the same time get more business from existing customer base. As long as your business has a need to acquire new customer and up sell with existing ones, inbound marketing is your best bet!

Q. What is the difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing? After all we do happen to have our Marketing Plan that documents strategy, planning and execution. Is Inbound Marketing anyway different than this?

A. Inbound Marketing is much more than the Marketing Plan, much more than strategy, planning and execution. It is about defining your area of expertise and the boundaries, establishing your brand, creating the happy customers and perform introspection to know what more/better is needed to serve your customers better. In inbound marketing, as it is rightly stated - you don't need to go behind the customers to generate the business. In this case you need to be there around and when the customer needs your help, he will reach out to you. 

Q. Is Inbound Marketing another way of creating and managing website?

A. Creating and managing website if one aspect of inbound marketing but it is really way more than just website. 

Q. How do I generate leads via Facebook, Linkedin or/and Website? 

A. Having just FB page or website wouldn't work unless you put that into work for you. Inbound Marketing helps you decide which channels to be used and how to put these channels to work for you. Just having thousands of clicks to the webpage wouldn't work unless they are not generating leads. Likewise, you need a strategy and planning in place which is available in inbound marketing. 

Alright now that Inbound Marketing FAQs are answered, learn more about it through the #Hubspot certification here.

If you are willing to give Inbound Marketing Strategy a chance but not aware of how to go about it - please feel free to reach out to me. I will be glad to help you at no cost consultation!!