The way customers buy is no more the same. Customers today are smarter than ever. It’s imperative that businesses keep abreast with customers’ interests and buying methodologies. That’s what buyer personas help with.
But wait! Is it that easy to create these personas?
Not at all! In fact, the process is prone to a number of mistakes that are rather considered to be good practices. Here are some of the most common mistakes that render these personas less effective.
Neglecting research:
Creating buyer personas is just like making up stories about your target customers which is useless. A successful creation of personas requires a thorough research. This further implies data collection from present customers, prospects and the reports prepared by the sales and marketing team. The data hence gathered helps in differentiating the qualified leads from the unqualified ones.
Considering buyer personas just for marketing:
Those involved in a business often make this mistake. They consider buyer personas only for marketing purposes. However, buyer personas are much more than just a medium for fuelling up the marketing efforts. They can effectively be circulated and used to let each and every department of the business know who they are putting in all those efforts for!
Creating way too many personas:
This is yet another mistake that renders the buyer personas less effective. People involved in a business need to know that research is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean that this calls for an accumulation of all sort of trends in data. This would rather lead to a hassle due to a number of buyer personas piled up like crap! So, it’s advisable, to begin with, a single persona for the majority of customers, and then create others when the variation in trends does not fit anymore.
Portraying ideal customers:
The creation of buyer personas is all about portraying a target buyer based upon your present customers’ interests, buying patterns and so on. However, the entire process is often mistaken and businesses go on defining the people they want to be customers. Creating the right kind of personas help in identifying customers’ interests, pain points and hence tailoring the products and services accordingly.
Are you too making the same mistakes? If yes, you are losing on a lot of great opportunities!