Ayishat Olanrewaju: How to Create a Buyer Persona for your Personal Brand

It is not everyone that will connect with your brand. Your brand is made for a group of people who you should consider as your tribe. Every brand, whether individual or corporate, needs a target audience.

If you try to tailor your brand to everyone, you might actually be targeting no one in particular. And your brand gets watered down.

Your brand message needs a focus, and it starts with identifying who you are talking to. How do you identify who you need to talk to? You need to create a buyer persona.

What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is an ideal person you picture paying for your services or purchasing your products. Your buyer persona is very specific and may or may not be imaginary. The goal of your buyer persona is to help you get clear on the problems your ideal buyer is trying to solve, his or her motivations, what drives them, what their values are, and so on.

Here is how to create one:

Find out who constitutes your current audience
Take a look at what who your current audience is online to have an idea of the people who are receiving your messages and interacting with them. Check out your social media, email sign-ups, etc., to have an idea of those who already vibe with your brand.

Market research
You need to conduct surveys of the market and find out what people think about your brand, and also what they hope to see your brand address. You can take a poll, a survey, or a focus group discussion to get this done.

Who do you picture?
You should picture someone in mind, an ideal person interacting with your content. Jot down whatever it is that comes to your mind about this person.

Find out where your customers are
Find out where your customers are currently are, the platforms they use, the websites they visit, etc.

Put it into writing
Put all you have discovered into writing, and some of the things to include here are:

• Personal details.
• Is the person a male or a female?
• Age range.
• Location.
• Marital status.
• Type of education.
• Income level.
• What does he/she do for fun?
• What are his/her biggest fears?
• Working place.
• What challenges is he/she facing at work?
• How does he/she define success?
• What social media does he/she use?
• How does this person prefer to consume information and communicate?

Once you have been able to address the above and many more, you will have a robust information to work with.

Create multiple buyer personas
Remember to also create multiple buyer personas, as one buyer persona may not be an ideal representation of your entire audience. It is important to analyse the buyer persona categories you need to create. Here is a great tool to help you create a buyer persona.

Adopt your buyer persona’s communication style
This is the way your buyer persona likes to either communicate or consume information. Adopting it makes it easy for both parties.

Identify your buyer journey
A buyer journey is like a map of how your ideal audience discovers your brand, interacts with your brand, and pays for your services. It is a journey because it takes several steps, so you need to identify it. Do they first visit your website or social media page? Sign up for your newsletter? Follow you on social media? etc.

Create content for your buyer journey
Your buyer journey is divided into five stages: awareness state, interest stage, consideration stage, purchase state, and retention stage. The awareness stage is when they first find out about your brand. The interest stage is when they begin to develop interest in your brand. The consideration stage is when they are considering paying for your services. The purchase stage is when they pay for your services or products. While the retention stage is after they have paid for your services or products.

Give value
When creating content for your buyer journey, ensure that you give enough value so that your audience can return. Don’t only talk about them patronising you that you don’t even give them an idea of the value you are offering.

Share your content where your buyer persona is
Lastly, don’t forget to share your content on the platforms your buyer persona is and show up consistently.