How Much Do You REALLY Know About Buyer Personas?

Think you know all about buyer personas? Step right up and test your knowledge! Check out these true-or-false buyer persona statements and see how much you REALLY know.

Buyer personas are target markets and demographics.

False. Target markets and demographics are a building block of buyer personas. Personas themselves are much more detailed, and rely more on qualitative information rather than quantitative data.

Buyer personas are created based on your single best buyer.

False. Personas are based on the majority qualities of ALL of your best buyers. If four of your buyers love ice cream and one hates it, that last guy will just have to deal with some delicious frozen shout outs once in a while.

In all seriousness, trying to create your personas around one best buyer is a risky gamble. Individuals have opinions, tics, and idiosyncrasies that may not apply to your other buyers. And the less a buyer identifies with your content, the less likely they are to purchase.

Buyer personas are purely a marketing tool.

False. Buyer Personas are a best practice for your business. They’re also not just for marketing - all aspects of your business can benefit from personas, from sales to research to product development.

Buyer personas take time to produce.

True. Buyer Personas can take months to produce, depending on how quickly you can get interviews with customers and when you can schedule workshops with your team. You also need time to familiarize yourself with your personas - kind of like hanging out with an imaginary friend.

You can build buyer personas with all of your customer data.

Big fat FALSE. The customer data you currently possess is called secondary research, and the most important information for your personas is primary research. Primary research comes directly from your customers - most commonly interviews and surveys.

Primary research is necessary to hear your best buyers’ story and voice right from the source. That’s the story and voice you want your content to mirror back to them.

Buyer personas make customers more likely to act.

True! MLT Creative reports that applying buyer personas to an email campaign increased the open rate by 2x, and the clickthrough rate by 5x. When you’re actually producing content that your buyers are interested in, of course they’re going to click more!

Buyer personas are super great.

Of course we think this one is true. But, you should go ahead and find out for yourself.

For more info, here's a quick post on what makes a great persona.