What mistakes should you avoid when designing the buyer persona for your business?

Mistakes can become our best teachers. Of course, one should keep in mind that even though buyer personas are essential when establishing Content Marketing strategies, they can also become your worst enemy if you manage them in the wrong way.

The most important thing when it comes to executing a content strategy is properly defining the key users of the service or product you are going to offer. This is the most critical aspect of your Inbound Marketing plan.

Buyer personas are responsible for segmenting your content and are important for differentiating you from the rest of the market. As you may already know, they are the first crucial aspect of an Inbound plan, but I want to tell you about some of the most common mistakes that occur when designing such plans.

The mistakes you should avoid when designing your buyer personas

1: Creating a large family

This is normal, so don’t worry if it happens. We have just started, the objective of our brand is not yet clear and we haven’t gathered enough information.

It is not easy to go from “my target audience are men aged 20 to 50” to “my target audience are Housewife Luisa and Fashion Victim Maria” with their well-established particularities, motivations and needs.

My advice is to focus on the most important, well-defined things. Think about the people who buy your products, what they need and why they make certain decisions.

Don’t forget those potential customers that you have always kept in mind, but you have not yet reached. Avoid developing more than three profiles in the same phase.

2: Placing too much trust in your perceptions

This error can be a complex one. You might think that you are the only one who has the ability to recognise your target audience – or at least this is what you might tell yourself. You think you know the market that you are involved in globally, but nothing could be further from the truth.

As a rule, we assume that market studies tell the whole truth. However, since they cannot cover each and every human being, we must challenge what we see on paper.

Talk to your customers, conduct more in-depth research and stop only using surveys and opinions from your sales team.

3: Searching incorrect data

We think we need to collect so much information that we ultimately get fixated on subjects that are not relevant to us which wastes a lot of time and energy. This can result in a loss of focus.

Unless the services or products that you offer depend on different variables such as the gender, hobbies or marital status of your target audience, your focus will be spread out elsewhere.

The most important thing is being able to clearly define the needs of your target audience, their finances, fears, priorities and decision criteria. This will enable you to establish a content map and develop an appropriate Inbound Marketing Plan.

4: Involving the wrong personas

Buyer personas must be created with a divergent, heterogeneous dynamic. This should be done as a team so that everyone is aligned with the philosophy and goals of the company.

This task cannot be assigned to a single team member because their vision will be unique and therefore biased. What about other people? All parties are important. If you promote a project with different profiles, creativity will increase, as will information, and therefore the chances of achieving more will follow suit.

Conclusion

Moving forward, everything should now be clear: prioritise, focus your attention on the history of your Buyer Persona. Involve your team so that the process becomes more collaborative. This way, you will see that little by little everything will be optimised and will work in the best possible way.

Edith Gómez, external collaborator,  editor at Gananci.com. She is passionate about digital marketing and specialises in online communication.

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