Best-Buyer Persona

Adrienne Barnes process of building a rich/actionable persona of your ideal customer.

Best Buyer Persona

who your best customers (ideal customers) are, how they behave, and why they behave that way — so you can win their lifelong loyalty

Real buyer personas are…

Built from your actual customer data

Your Best Buyer Persona will reveal:
What products to build next
Which features to prioritize
Where customers run into problems
Why (and what) they buy to solve those problems
What campaigns to run
How to craft messaging & copy that converts

I’m Adrienne Barnes, and I’m the data-driven messaging expert behind Best Buyer Persona.

What does it mean to know your customers?

only one in three customers feel as though the products they use understand them. It may sound odd that people want technology to understand them, but being understood is a core human need. It gives people a sense of belonging and security.

I’ve found when founders, executives, and product folks perform research they want to get a lot of questions answered, and they want the customer’s approval, rather than just trying to relate to the customer and listening to their story.

If we want our customers to feel understood, we need to know who they are and understand the stories they tell, we need to build products and design in a way that feels intuitive to them.

How They Behave
Do you understand how they behave when they use your product?

2. Do you know how they behave outside of your product?

How They Self-Identify

belong to certain communities, participate in specific events and belong to certain corners of the internet.

understanding who they are both personally and professionally.

Why They Behave The Way They Do

when they’ve shared a big emotion with you

“I was so frustrated when I couldn’t see X”…

These are emotional threads that need to be pulled on just a bit to get to what’s underneath that emotion.

The moment you begin to defend or explain is the moment you stop listening.

Learn how to create the best buyer persona for your SaaS company: A Three-Step Approach - Best Buyer Persona

Step one: Get to Know Your Customers

The best buyer personas use a job-to-be-done approach to your customer research and help you learn as much as you can about your customers

Before you pick up the phone, you need to decide whom you are reaching out to. Your first choice should be your very best customers. (ideal customer)

if you’re just starting out and they don’t exist for you yet, don’t worry! You will just reach out to people who meet your ideal customer profile instead.

In the beginning, this is like a science experiment. You have a hypothesis of who your ideal customers are, and by the end of the conversations, you’ll have a good idea if your hypothesis was supported or not.

The most effective way to get to know your customers is to get on the phone with them.

The easiest way to get your customers on the phone is simply to ask them.

A simple and to-the-point email or social media post will work wonders

Hey {Name}, We’re looking to learn more about our customers and would be honored if you could spare 20 minutes for a phone call. We’re not going to sell you anything, we just want to learn from you. We appreciate your time so much, we’d like to offer you a 20% discount on next month’s bill. Please, find the best time in the next two weeks in my calendar here.

Here are a few tactics to ensure you aren’t wasting time asking the wrong questions.

The powerhouse question is: Why?

helps your customer answer the reasoning behind their idea, the motivation behind their actions, and the emotions behind their thoughts.

Only ask questions you know you need the answer to.

it’s best if you record your conversations and have them transcribed.

A survey is a great way to gather information from a larger section of your audience or to get relevant feedback during a specific action your audience takes.

phone calls come first

Step Two: Organize Your Data

You’re looking for commonly repeated phrases, words, and remarks

Create a category, and anytime you see the same repeated words or phrases, put them into the same category. The category name could be anything of relevance; maybe it’s “Buying Decisions” or “Not Quite Customers” or “ Really Happy People.”

One of my favorite ways to categorize data is by buyer awareness

You may have one quote, phrase, or word that ends up in multiple different categories

Organizing all the data can be as simple as using Excel or Google sheets

You’re looking for words that show emotion and motivation.

This will likely be the most time consuming part of the overall project. But don’t lose hope!

Step Three: Segment Your Audience (market segment)

How To Segment Your Audience

breaking up a large group of people into smaller groups with similar characteristics and commonalities

How you segment your audience is very personal to your brand and your customers.

Receiving constant feedback from your customers and then applying it to your product or strategy is known as a feedback loop.