What Information is Important for Good Buyer Persona Development?

Many downloadable buyer persona templates are packed full of various pieces of data. The implication is that collecting each piece of data is necessary to build an ideal customer profile.

How much data is enough to build a good buyer persona?

Members of a sales team often translate the term buyer persona into something made up by the Marketing team that isn’t based in reality (and there is plenty of evidence to validate their perception). It’s not fair and I want to change that perception.

My friend, Adele Revella is the founder of the Buyer Persona Institute. She has the best explanation of what data to capture and use. She says to only capture the data needed to find and influence potential customers. That’s it. Simple and clear.

If age helps find and influence potential customers, capture it.

If geography helps find and influence potential customers, capture it.

If education level helps find and influence potential customers, capture it.

Otherwise, ignore it because it’s unnecessary noise.

By potential customers, I mean a market segment full of them, not an individual customer.

The goal of creating Buyer Personas is to:

• Identify potential customers with a high motivation to address a need your products fill,

• Engage with potential customers about the issues that are important to them,

• Guide potential customers to your products that satisfy their need, and

• Provide the tools and insight to optimize your sales team efforts

Buyer Personas make a significant contribution to product launch planning and the development of effective product launch strategy. If you don’t know the attributes of your buyer personas, how can you expect to have a successful product launch?

Get your copy of the BrainKraft Buyer Persona Canvas in the BrainKraft members file share area.