A buyer persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. They help you understand your customers and prospective customers better. If you're in the process of conducting research to curate a buyer persona, tell us below! Give us your tips and tricks, and what research methods you've found success with. To learn more about buyer personas, check out the "Getting to Know Your Customer" lesson via HubSpot Academy.
For our company, we're focusing our reserach on conducting interviews with customers and potential customers. And we are also planning to gather the sales teams insights and feedbacks.
Looking into the typical age range for males and what they are typically doing around the age range 25-34 years old. Took some data from the web and put it all together to create Jarvus the marketing specialist.
The following methods have helped me in curating the buyer persona -
1. Existing Customer data
Current customer base is an excellent source of real-world persona information through which I am able to analyze
Sales records: Job titles, company size, industries, common pain points
Support tickets: Frequently asked questions, product usage patterns
Website analytics: Popular content, engagement, where leads came from
2. Conducting Interviews
Direct conversations with people in my target roles offer the most in-depth, nuanced understanding of their challenges, goals, and decision-making processes.
3. Social Media Listening
Social platforms like LinkedIn reveal candid conversations about industry problems, trends, and what your target audience cares about, which platform they access and others
4. Competitor Analysis
Understanding competitors' messaging and target audience helps refine own positioning and persona definition.
I recently went through every interaction from our contact box and curated a customer profile list which includes job titles, workflows, pain points, and wishes with regards to their use cases. These will be supplemented with customer interviews to come up with our buyer personas.
The methods I find most valuable for creating the buyer persona are interviewing and social media listening. I like the interview process because it is a face-to-face interaction, and I can ask questions to clarify things. I find social media listening useful because I can look at comments from other accounts offering a similar service and identify unmet needs or generate ideas from what the buyer may expect from a service or product.
Entrevistas individuais: Conduzi entrevistas individuais com policiais com 14 anos de carreira ou mais para entender suas experiências e necessidades. Perguntei sobre os desafios específicos que enfrentam em suas investigações, as ferramentas que atualmente utilizam e quais recursos adicionais consideram úteis para melhorar seu trabalho.
Pesquisas online: Elaborei uma pesquisa online direcionada aos policiais com 14 anos de carreira, perguntando sobre suas preferências em termos de tecnologia e ferramentas de investigação. Explorei suas opiniões sobre o uso de novas tecnologias para aprimorar suas investigações e identifiquei quais recursos eles consideravam mais importantes.
Análise de dados internos: Analisei os dados internos da nossa empresa para identificar padrões de uso de ferramentas por policiais com 14 anos de carreira. Isso incluiu dados de acesso às nossas plataformas, feedback de clientes e registros de treinamento para entender como os policiais estão atualmente utilizando nossas ferramentas e quais áreas podem ser aprimoradas.
Grupos focais: Realizei grupos focais com policiais com diferentes níveis de experiência para discutir suas necessidades específicas em termos de investigação. Exploramos como nossas ferramentas poderiam ajudá-los em suas tarefas diárias e quais recursos adicionais eles gostariam de ver implementados.
Análise de mídias sociais: Monitorei as mídias sociais relacionadas à comunidade policial para identificar tendências e preocupações comuns entre os policiais com 14 anos de carreira. Isso ajudou a validar nossas descobertas e garantir que estávamos abordando as necessidades reais desse segmento de clientes.
I think a lot of people talked enought about tricks and tips to get "better", so I'll instead will talk about the failed experience and mistakes that I made during the first's try of collecting information.And, all that happend before I knew Hubspot. The main mistake was the over focus on gather to much "sample", I spend a lot of time to just collect hundred and hundred of contacts ,and even more time on building the sheet with all the information my team had at time.At end I couldn't make even a standard and efficient questionaire to use on these prospects, I had to improvise a lot of question base on their individual caratheristics, and improvising usually means also "unprepared for the unexpected", which caused a unprofessional image of myself and my company. If before to start blindly the action, I would engage a meeting first, with all the member of the team, discussing and filtering the buyer persona, we can get more specificic sequences and actions.That could lead to something better, I believe.
One means of data collection that has been quite fruitful is conducting Focused Group Discussions. It's important to form these groups carefully bearing in mind they are from similar demography and stage in the buyer journey. In my experience I have observed a more layered insight when groups resonate or even dissonate about similar questions. FGDs often save a lot of time and require a grounded semi-structured approach to the discussions for maximum insight.
