Creating a buyer’s persona has become an important part of business marketing. In fact, it has become a necessity because every business is striving to stay on the top. They look for ways to convert and generate ROI.
By the time you come across the term buyer persona, let me believe that you are already aware of the SEO, content creation for social media, and other digital marketing strategies. And of course, you understand the power of buyers’ persona.
Many big businesses at least at one point in their business career have had buyer personas. But what do businesses do with these personas and how do these help them? Before we answer these questions, let us understand the making of a buyer persona.
Buyer Persona Makes Sense
Whether you are new in the business or an oldie, creating customer persona will bring in benefits. It has proved beneficial to other businesses as well; the stats and figures say it.
71% companies that exceed their revenue use business buyer persona.
24% businesses have generated more leads, 39% experienced higher conversion rates, and 56% created quality leads.
The figures are the testament to the fact that buyer personas work and if these are build using proper strategy can give excellent results.
Now, let me give you a brief into how these personas are built.
How do companies make business buyer personas?
Have you ever thought why businesses ask you to fill forms when you need a service? What would they do with the information you provide them?
Well, the answer is they create buyer personas or you can even say, customized profiles. For example, tinder, clothing, and other mobile applications now seek your permission to have an access to the personal information. Once you provide an access, the businesses are able to track your hobbies, likes, dislikes, age, gender, etc. Based on this information, they build a persona profile or say a sample profile. Such profiles are made to understand the users. Once the business learns about its customers, it gets easy for them to market their products and services.
In order to build a strong buyer persona profile, one has to go through the entire process of data collection and information gathering. With the availability of advanced technology and big data tools, it has become easier to collect information and create personas at individual level. But just a minute, the process does not end here. After collecting the data, and distilling it, the next step is to take it through A/B testing.
Even though it is the last step, it is important because it allows us a chance to improve overall performance of the buyer persona.
Role of A Buyer Persona
The buyer persona allows you to get into the head of your potential customer. Dealing with a buyer persona is just like meeting and knowing your buyer. It stops you from making guesses and assumptions. So, when you build a persona, you get clarity with the ideas for marketing, selling your products and services.
From Where to Get the Data
Gathering data can be difficult. It requires patience, and understanding of what sort of information you need and what is to be ignored. Let’s see from where can you pick the information:
- Content your audience views, or download
- Heat maps
- Tracking online search behaviour
- Collecting data from the sales team
- Talking to the customer service team
- Customer surveys
- Customer reviews and feedback
- Social media – Facebook, Instagram profiles
- Competitor’s data
You can take it all in through the above platforms. But one method that proves to be your true friend, and gives you serious accurate data, that is A/B testing.
How does a buyer persona look?
Here’s a sample to give you clarity on the buyer persona.
A/B Testing for Buyer Persona
Conducting this test is easier than you think but it takes time. The process is lengthy because one has to test every element of whatever is put to the test. Through two samples – control and a variation, businesses are able to generate effective results. But here’s a thing – great results are generated through well-crafted testing plans.
It is essential for the modern marketers to see what’s working and what’s not working. Al those things that do not work should be fixed and what’s good should be made better. This is the aim of conducting the A/B test.
Through this test, you gradually find the optimum best structure, content, design, and plan for your target audience.
The process does not take place in a day or two. It can take months. But because it offers a lot of benefits, one should definitely take the buyer persona through this test.
Here’s what you must adhere to make a strong A/B test.
- Collecting valuable data
- Setting a definite goal (which elements need improvement)
- Creating clear hypothesis
- Brainstorming ideas
- Running the test
- Analyzing results
You can conduct this test by using various tools – free, expensive, and feature-rich. Choose any as per your budget, requirement, and needs.
Some of the best and most popular A/B tools are Optimizely, Crazy Egg, Visual Website Optimizer, Unbounce, Pagewiz, Nelio AB testing, Simple Page Tester, MailChimp, Aweber.
Using The A/B Test
Now we know what A/B testing is, how can it be conducted and why is it necessary to conduct this test for buyer persona. We have got answers to all these questions. So, by now we must be appreciating the connection between the test and the buyer persona.
The aim is to improve the existing persona. Making it better than before by tweaking, bringing slight changes.
This test tells you what resonates with your visitors and what does not.
No assumptions, only hard data
The best thing about this test is that unlike making interpretations in the buyer personas, this test suggests what could your buyer like and don’t like.
For example;
Suppose you have a product, say bill paying app. Your evidence strongly suggests that your buyers are motivated by the fear of late bill payment and facing the penalty. You know what they fear and you think they would need your app to solve their issues.
If you do not test it and invest huge budget in the marketing, there is a fair probability of things goes wrong. In this case, your marketing would meet a very cool reception, that means poor conversions and revenue.
So, to prevent such accidents, A/B testing is done. This allows you to act only based on the results. It saves money, energy, and efforts.
Whatever your assumptions are, the A/B test brings in focus every element.
What is their motivation, test A or B?
What are they more concerned about?
How do they respond to test A and test B?
What triggers them to click the CTA?
What do they prefer the most- guides, checklists, or what?
Which feature works better?
Where do they react the most- A or B?
These questions and more of such sorts are taken into the account. You get to know every little detail of what works like magic and what goes down in the drain. You can use the free and basic Google Content Experiment feature in Google Analytics.
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