How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Persona Template]

Marketing Margie. Sales Sam. IT Isabel. Accounting Alan.

您知道您的企业买家角色是谁吗？如果是这样，您对它们了解多少？

Buyer personas是你理想的c semi-fictional表示ustomers based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, guide product development to suit the needs of your target customers, and align all work across your organization (from marketing to sales to service).

As a result, you'll be able to attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business, who you'll be more likely to retain over time.

More specifically, having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow-up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.

"Okay, so personas are really important to my business. But, how do I actually make one?"

Ahh! The million-dollar question. The good news is, they aren't that difficult to create. It's all about how you obtain your market research and customer data, and the presentation of that information within your business.

Follow this guide anddownload these persona templatesto simplify this process. Before you know it, you'll have complete, well-planned buyer personas to show off to your entire company!

Before we dive into the buyer persona-creation process, let's pause to understand the impact of well-developed buyer personas on your business (most specifically, your marketing efforts).

到底是为什么买家角色对你那么重要r business?

Buyer personas help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better. This makes it easier for you to tailor your content, messaging, product development, and services to meet the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of the members of your target audience.

例如，您可能知道您的目标买家是看护人，但是您知道他们的特定需求和兴趣吗？理想买家的典型背景是什么？为了充分了解是什么使您的最佳客户打勾，至关重要的是为您的业务开发详细的角色。

最强大的买方角色是基于市场研究和insights您从实际的客户群（通过调查，访谈等）收集。

Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas or as many as 10 or 20. But if you’re new to personas, start small. You can always develop more personas later if needed.

那“负”买家角色呢？

While a buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, a negative — or "exclusionary” — persona is a representation of who you don’t want as a customer.

For example, this could include professionals who are too advanced for your product or service, students who are only engaging with your content for research/ knowledge, or potential customers who are just too expensive to acquire. The potential customers may be too expensive because of a low average sale price, their propensity to churn, or their unlikeliness to purchase again from your company.

How can buyer personas be used in marketing?

At the most basic level, developing personas allows you to create content and messaging that appeals to your target audience. It also enables you to target or个性化您的营销for different segments of your audience.

For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, you can segment by buyer persona and tailor your messaging to what you know about those different personas.

Furthermore, when combined with lifecycle stage (i.e. how far along someone is in your sales cycle), buyer personas also allow you to map out and create highly targeted content. (You can learn more about how to do that bydownloading our Content Mapping Template.)

And if you take the time to also create negative personas, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to segment out the "bad apples” from the rest of your contacts. This can help you achieve a lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-customer — and, therefore, see higher sales productivity.

Different Types of Buyer Personas

在开始以自己的角色工作时，您可能会问自己：“买家角色的不同类型是什么？”从那里开始，适应您的业务很容易 - 对吗？

Well, that's not exactly how it works. There isn't a set list of universally-recognized buyer personas to choose from, nor is there a standard for the number of personas you need. This is because each business (no matter how many competitors they have) is unique. For that reason, their buyer personas should be unique to them, too.

That’s why identifying and creating your different buyer personas can, at times, be slightly challenging. This is why we recommend usingHubSpot's Make My Personagenerator (as well asHubSpot's persona templates) to simplify the process of creating different personas.

Just like buyer personas are unique to each company, so is their name for them. You may see buyer personas referred to as “customer personas", "marketing personas", "audience personas", or "target persona”. Each of these carry the same meaning but will look unique within your company.

In general, companies may have the same, or similar, categories for their buyer personas (e.g. a marketer, an HR rep, an IT manager, etc.). But the different personas your business has and the number of them your business requires will be tailored to who your target audience includes and what you offer your customers.

What goes into persona development?

现在，我们已经讨论了买方角色和不同类型的重要性，让我们探索开发您的买家角色的细微差别。

在开始创建买家角色之前，您需要确定团队中将在其发展中发挥作用的人。谁应该创建您的买家角色？坦白说，任何面向客户的团队成员都应该是该过程的一部分。虽然这听起来好像您在厨房里有太多厨师，但重要的是您从每个部门中选择一位代表。每个部门都有与客户的独特经验，可以作为识别目标受众的宝贵信息。

建立团队时，请从销售和营销的代表开始。销售员工直接与客户沟通。您的营销人员可以根据有关客户的信息得出结论并创建数据。此外，您的团队应包括一名执行负责人，他确保在开发的每一步中都保持品牌使命和价值观。

Persona development teams need sales, marketing, and executive members. You’ll find these individuals in almost every business, which leads to the question,“What type of business needs to create buyer personas?” Answer: all of them. Every business needs customers or clients. As long as this concept is true, buyer personas should be a staple in every business, regardless of the industry.

在开发买家角色至关重要的时候，您的企业定期审查和更新它们同样重要。花时间每年这样做。这可能是一项繁琐的任务。但是，确定目标受众是确保这些买家将来和重复客户的第一步。

现在，您准备好开始创建买家角色了吗？

How to Create Buyer Personas

Buyer personas can be created through research, surveys, and interviews — all with a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside your contacts database who might align with your target audience.

Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop personas:

• 透过你的contacts databaseto uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
• Use form fields that capture important persona information whencreating forms to use on your website. For example, if all of your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms.
• Consider your sales team's feedback on the leads they're interacting with most. What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?
• Interview customers and prospects to discover what they like about your product or service.

Now, how can you use the above research to create your personas?

Once you've gone through the research process, you'll have a lot of meaty, raw data about your potential and current customers. But what do you do with it? How do you distill all of it so it's easy for everyone to understand all the information you've gathered?

The next step is to use your research to identify patterns and commonalities from the answers to your interview questions, develop at least one primary persona, and share that persona with the rest of the company.

Use ourfree, downloadable persona templateto organize the information you've gathered about your persona(s). Then share these slides with the rest of your company so everyone can benefit from your research and develop an in-depth understanding of the person (or people) they're targeting every day at work.

Here's how to work through the steps involved in creating your buyer personas in more detail.

1. Fill in your persona's basic demographic information.

Ask demographic-based questions over the phone, in person, or with online surveys. (Some people are more comfortable disclosing personal information like this.)

It's also helpful to include some descriptive buzzwords and mannerisms of your persona you may have picked up on during your conversations to make it easier for people on your team to identify certain personas when talking to prospects.

Here's an example of how you might complete Section 1 inyour templatefor one of your personas:

Download this Template

2. Share what you've learned about your persona's motivations.

This is where you'll distill the information you learned from asking "why" during those interviews. What keeps your persona up at night? Who do they want to be? Most importantly, tie that all together by telling people how your company can help them.

Download this Template

3. Help your sales team prepare for conversations with your persona.

Include some real quotes from your interviews that exemplify what your personas are concerned about, who they are, and what they want. Then create a list of the objections they might raise so your sales team is prepared to address those during their conversations with prospects.

Download this Template

4. Craft messaging for your persona.

Tell people how to talk about your products/ services with your persona. This includes the nitty-gritty vocabulary you should use, as well as a more general elevator pitch that positions your solution in a way that resonates with your persona.

这将帮助你确保每个人都在你的公司bob全站appis speaking the same language when they're having conversations with leads and customers.

Download this Template

Finally, make sure you give your persona a name (e.g., Finance Manager Margie, IT Ian, or Landscaper Larry), so everyone internally refers to each persona the same way, allowing for cross-team consistency.

And if you're a HubSpot customer, add your persona toMarketing Hubbyfollowing this step-by-step setup guide.

How to Find Interviewees for Researching Buyer Personas

One of the most critical steps to establishing your buyer persona(s) is finding some people to speak with to understand, well, who your buyer persona is.

That means you'll have to conduct some interviews to get to know what drives your target audience. But how do you find those interviewees? There are a few sources you should tap into:

1. Use your current customers.

Your existing customer base is the perfect place to start your interviews because they've already purchased your product and engaged with your company. At least some of them are likely to exemplify your target persona(s).

Don't just talk to people who love your product and want to spend an hour gushing about you (as good as that feels). Customers who are unhappy with your product will show other patterns that will help you form a solid understanding of your personas.

For example, you might find that some of your less happy customers have bigger teams and need greater collaboration functionality from your product. Or, you may find they find your product too technical and difficult to use. In both cases, you learn something about your product and what your customers' challenges are.

Another benefit of interviewing current customers is that you may not need to offer them an incentive (e.g., gift cards). Customers often like being heard. Interviewing them gives them a chance to tell you about their world, their challenges, and what they think of your product.

Customers also like to have an impact on the products they use. So, as you involve them in interviews like this, you may find they become even more loyal to your company. When you reach out to customers, be clear that your goal is to get their feedback and that it’s highly valued by your team.

2. Use your prospects.

Be sure to also interview people who have not purchased your product and don't know much about your brand. Your current prospects and leads are great options because you already have their contact information.

使用您所拥有的数据（即通过潜在客户生成表格或网站分析收集的任何内容）来找出谁可能适合您的目标角色。Tools such asEnlyftcan also help you create custom buyer persona profiles and match your prospects to them to make it easier to find the people you need to talk to.

3. Use your referrals.

您可能还需要依靠一些推荐来与可能适合您目标角色的人交谈，尤其是当您进入新市场或还没有任何潜在客户或客户时。

Use your network (coworkers, existing customers, social media contacts, etc.) to find people you'd like to interview and be introduced to. It may be tough to get a large volume of people this way, but you'll likely get some very high-quality interviews out of it.

If you don't know where to start, try searching on LinkedIn for people who may fit into your target personas and see which results have any connections in common with you. Then,reach out to your common connectionsfor introductions.

4. Use third-party networks.

For interviewees who are completely removed from your company, there are a few third-party networks you can recruit from.Craigslistallows you to post ads for people interested in any job, andUserTesting.comallows you to run remote user testing (with some follow-up questions).

You'll have less control over sessions run through UserTesting.com, but it's a great resource for quick user testing recruiting.

Now that you know how to identify interviewees, let's look at some tips for recruiting them.

Tips for Recruiting Interviewees

As you reach out to potential buyer persona interviewees, here are a few ideas to improve your response rates.

1. Use incentives.

While you may not need them in all scenarios (e.g., customers who already want to talk to you), incentives give people a reason to participate in an interview if they don't have a relationship with you. A simple gift card is an easy option.

2. Be clear that this isn't a sales call.

This is especially important when dealing with non-customers. Be clear that you're doing research and just want to learn from them. You are not getting them to commit to a one-hour sales call. You're getting them to commit to telling you about their lives, jobs, and challenges.

3. Make it easy to say yes.

Take care of everything for your potential interviewee. Suggest times but be flexible. Allow them to pick a time right off the bat and send a calendar invitation with a reminder to block off their time.

4. Decide how many people you need to interview.

Unfortunately, the answer is, it depends. Start with at least three to five interviews for each persona you're creating. If you already know a lot about your persona, that may be enough. You may need to do multiple interviews with each category of interviewees (customers, prospects, people who don't know your company).

The rule of thumb is when you start accurately predicting what your interviewee is going to say, it's probably time to stop. Through these interviews, you'll naturally start to notice patterns.

一旦您开始期待和预测您的受访者会说什么，这意味着您已经采访了足够的人来查找和内部化这些模式。

5. Determine which questions you'll ask interviewees.

It's time to conduct the interview! After the normal small talk and thank you's, it's time to jump into your questions. There are several categories ofquestions you'll want to ask in persona interviewsto create a complete persona profile.

20 Questions to Ask in Persona Interviews

The following questions are organized into eight categories. Feel free to customize this list and remove or add more questions that may be appropriate for your target customers.

1. Role Questions

• What is your job role? Your title?
• How is your job measured?
• What does a typical day look like?
• 您的工作需要什么技能？
• What knowledge and tools do you use in your job?
• Who do you report to? Who reports to you?

2. Company Questions

• 您的公司在哪个行业或行业中工作？bob全站app
• What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?

3. Goal Questions

• 您负责什么？
• What does it mean to be successful in your role?

4. Challenge Question

• 你最大的挑战是什么?

5. Watering Hole Questions

• 您如何学习工作的新信息？
• What publications or blogs do you read?
• 您参与哪些协会和社交网络？

6. Personal Background Questions

• 描述您的个人人口统计学（如果可能的话，询问他们的年龄，是否已婚以及是否有孩子）。
• 描述你的教育背景。什么级别啊f education did you complete, which schools did you attend, and what did you study?
• Describe your career path. How did you end up where you are today?

7. Shopping Preference Questions

• How do you prefer to interact with vendors (e.g., email, phone, in-person)?
• Do you use the internet to research vendors or products? If yes, how do you search for information?
• 描述最近的购买。您为什么考虑购买，评估过程是什么，以及如何决定购买该产品或服务？

8. The "Why?" Question

This is the number one tip for a successful persona interview.

The follow-up question to pretty much every question in the above list should be "why?" Through these interviews, you're trying to understand your customers' (or potential customers') goals, behaviors, and motivators. But keep in mind that people aren't always great at reflecting on their behaviors to tell you what drives them at their core.

例如，您的主要关注点不是访问其网站的数量。您关心的是，他们衡量这些访问是一种表明他们做得很好的高级访问的方式。

Start with a simple question. For instance, "What is your biggest challenge?" Then spend a good amount of time diving deeper into that one question to learn more about that person. You learn more by asking "why?" than more superficial questions.

Buyer Persona Examples

Let's go over someexamples of completed buyer personas为了更好地了解它们的外观。

B2B Buyer Persona Example

The image below is a B2B buyer persona for someone who works in HR. The persona paints a clear picture of the target customer's struggles and how the business can best meet those needs. In this case, HR recruiting tools streamline processes, make recruiting easier, and help HR expertly manage their overall job duties.

B2C买方角色示例

The image below is a B2C buyer persona for a music streaming service.

Based on this persona, a streaming service would want to ensure that it has a mobile app that’s user-friendly, sends new music notifications, and makes it easy for users to discover new music related to their interests and share content with friends.

Create Your Buyer Personas

创建您的买家角色，以更深入地了解目标客户，并确保团队中的每个人都知道如何最佳目标，支持和与客户合作。这将有助于您提高影响范围，提高转化并提高忠诚度。

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.