How to define buyer personas and their pain points

Knowing your customers and fully understanding your unique buyer persona is an important part of every successful startup, SaaS, e-commerce, small business, or enterprise company. When you know who your customers are and what they need, you can position your products and services more effectively to align with your target audience. But your buyer persona is more than what kinds of products they like or the type of marketing they’re attracted to.

A buyer persona is a fictionalized version of your ideal customer. This fictionalized character is typically done based on research that includes everything from pain points to interests to whether or not they’re a dog person and, by creating a profile as if it were a real person,  you can get crystal clear in the way that you market and communicate in a way that a broader demographic can’t do. 

Do your research

The more information you have, the easier it will be to build a buyer persona and identify their pain points. A good place to start is with your current customers. They’re already buyers from you, so gathering information about them gives you a great foundation for the type of customer that is attracted to your products and services. Think about the information you need for a buyer persona and their pain points, and send a survey to your current customers.  Some examples of questions to include; How did you hear about us? Why did you choose us over our competition? Did you have this problem long before you sought us out for a solution? And if they are willing to provide it, ask some personal questions like age, gender, job title, company name, and most used social channels. Once you have some data collected from your current customers, supplement it with market research in your industry. Knowing what’s going on in the industry, especially among customers and their needs, will help you understand what you need to be successful. Remember: some trends in customers’ buying are impacted by the economy and outside environment rather than just their lifestyle and personality. 

For example, let’s take the work that Canva has done. They defined a need that their buyer persona needed and was able to build, but also kept a close eye on trends and how the online design space was shifting. When Covid-19 hit and everyone started using Zoom more and more for communication, Canva released a set of Zoom backgrounds, capturing the trend and delighting their buyer personas at the same time. 

Find customers’ pain points

Your customers’ pain points are problems they need to solve that are addressed by your products and services. We also like to call this the “wake up sweaty test”. What is so urgent that your customers need the solution you provide? Are they are so troubled by their problem they “wake up sweaty”? These are usually things like not enough budget or money, lack of resources, physical pains, and even trying to find ways to accomplish their leadership’s ambitious goals. Your customer service representatives can also help with this part. Find out the kinds of questions they get asked frequently, especially prior to buying. What is it customers want to know about your products and services before they make a purchase? Why do they want to know these things? For example, is money or cost a big factor?  If you have multiple buyer personas for different products and services, you may need to identify sets of pain points for each persona to help ensure that your information is properly detailed to market effectively.

Define your solution 

Once you know who your (potential) customers are and what problems they have that need to be solved, you can align your products and services with those pain points. Take some time to think about your products and services from your customers’ points of view. What do they see when they’re shopping? How do you position those products and services to address their pain points? Use the language you gathered from your customer survey and from your customer service team. When you market your offerings, use this customer mindset to help customers link their pain points to your products and services as solutions. By marketing your products and services based on how they are a solution for your customers’ pain points, they will know exactly how and why your brand meets their needs. Knowing how your products and services solve their problems can also help you understand the best way to develop content marketing. Specifically, you can use your customers’ pain points as starting points for developing content.

Create your buyer persona

Once you have the information you need, you can create a buyer persona. Your buyer persona is key to developing your marketing strategy. Include detailed information about who your target customer is, their shopping habits, their pain points, and anything else that can help you align your products and services with their needs. The more details you have in your buyer persona, the more effective your marketing will be. The goal is to create a persona that could be a real person, including interests, hobbies, income brackets, and any other information you can gather. There’s no such thing as too much detail for your buyer persona. This persona is the foundation for your marketing strategy; how can you position your products and services to most effectively appeal to this customer?

The more information you can get about your customers and what they need, the easier it will be to develop a comprehensive buyer persona and set of pain points. Getting to know your customers in this way provides you with an insight that allows you to view your products and services from the perspective of your customers. That way, your marketing strategy can capitalize on what problems your customers have and how your products and services can solve those problems more effectively. The right marketing strategy will make a big difference in drawing new customers to your brand, creating loyalty among existing customers, and making progress toward your business goals and objectives.

Do you need help defining your companies buyer persona? We can help!