What is a Buyer Persona in marketing?

A Buyer Persona is a model of a buyer with specific needs and characteristics of real people who are the recipients of given products or services. It is also worth noting that the term buyer persona usually refers not to a single person, but to a whole specific group of buyers, such as students, young mothers or senior managers.

Buyer Persona is an image of a typical buyer, which does not consist of his/her gender, age or place of residence, but primarily of his/her needs, problems to be solved or motivations. So it is safe to say that it is a kind of psychological profile, which allows us to get to know the mindset of a given group of people. It is created in order to select an effective marketing strategy or method of communication with users, and as a result, to encourage them to make a purchase or use a particular solution.

What is the purpose of creating a buyer persona?

Companies choose to create a buyer persona because it allows them to shape a specific marketing strategy and message that is optimally tailored to customer needs. In addition, building buyer personas serves to:

  • Personalising the message;
  • segmentation of the sales funnel;
  • prioritisation of communication and sales activities;
  • optimize product and service features;
  • evaluation of profiles.

The right buyer persona also makes it easier to understand the motivations of customers seeking specific products or services, and therefore allows you to plan effective education and marketing campaigns and set the right direction.

How to Prepare the Product and Create a Buyer Persona

How to build a buyer persona?

Building a buyer persona involves two steps:

  • gathering information about the target audience,
  • Preparing the buyer’s model and the content of the message.

A successful example of gathering information about the buyer and then providing accurate and relevant details can be seen in how many modern online businesses operate. Once companies collect data about user preferences, behaviour, and previous interactions, they can personalise the experience through bonuses, recommendations, or exclusive offers that truly match the user’s interests. This approach not only builds trust but also strengthens customer loyalty, as people feel that the brand understands their needs and values their time. Moreover, continuous analysis of feedback helps businesses refine their strategy and maintain a long-term relationship with their audience.

When gathering information, it is important to remember that data obtained directly from customers, such as in the form of conversations, surveys, interviews or data taken from questionnaires, is more useful.

These are complemented by indirect data sources, which include website and social media analytics, online behaviour monitoring, marketing automation tools or information coming from customer service or marketing departments.

Collecting the right information allows you to move on to the second step of creating a buyer persona, which is to prepare the right model. It should be described based on the following questions:

  1. What is the customer’s external problem? – Why is he looking for a specific offer?
  2. What is the customer’s internal problem? – on what basis does he/she make purchasing decisions?
  3. What are the needs that drive the customer? – Why does he/she need this product or service?
  4. What characteristics are customers looking for? – What are the characteristics of the products or services in relation to the customer’s needs?
  5. What bothers the customer? – what prevents the customer from making a purchase.
  6. How can the customer’s problems be solved? – solutions to solve the customer’s problems.
  7. What will be useful for the client? – What positive changes in the client’s life will the purchase of certain goods or services bring;
  8. What will be harmful to the client? – The negative consequences that the customer will experience if he or she refuses the offer.

As a result of answering these questions, a buyer persona will be created which will allow marketing and sales to be targeted. In turn, the campaigns carried out will be in line with the customer needs previously studied.