As a paid media and analytics veteran of 18 years, he employs creative and analytical solutions to solve clients' biggest digital problems. Outside of the office, you can find Davis running, camping/hiking, chasing his dog Hank, or trying to make the perfect cup of coffee.
Read BioBelieve it or not, no matter how well you think your paid media campaign or landing page may be working, it can always be performing better. One BIG reason why it has yet to reach its potential is because you haven't been segmenting your potential customers. In other words, different types of people visit your site, and each visitor is at a different stage in the buying cycle and thinks and acts differently than the next...they all have different wants or needs.
Segmenting your potential customers, better known as creating buyer personas, helps you to sort out your ideal customers, and know their wants, needs, and pain points. They allow you to better understand your customers’ buying patterns and help align your online marketing strategies to meet those needs and behaviors. While you can create many different buyer personas for your business, there are a few types of personas you can optimize for to help increase efficiency and conversion rates.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a made-up profile of your ideal customer based on market research and data analytics of your existing customers. It includes the demographics, interests, problems, buying patterns, and behavioral traits of your target audience. Buyer personas help you understand your customers’ needs and wants and create marketing strategies and content tailored to them.
4 Types of Buyer Personas to Optimize For
Buyer personas help you to appeal to many different customer types depending on where they are in their buying journey. There are four main types of online purchasing personas: Competitive, Spontaneous, Humanistic, and Methodical. Knowing how each persona thinks and acts could help you exponentially when creating your online strategy. Find out more about how optimizing your content and strategy for each persona can help your business.
1. Competitive Persona
A competitive persona is exactly how it sounds. They are looking for your competitive advantages. Why are you better than the next guy? Do you have any qualifications? If so, what are they and why do they matter? They don't waste time and need to be convinced your company can solve their problem quickly.
Tailoring your content to showcase case studies, product or service advantages, and other companies that use your product or service can help win over a competitive persona. Once you have converted this type of persona, often they are repeat customers and refer other potential business.
2. Spontaneous Persona
The spontaneous persona is looking for confirmation that you can get them what they need quickly. They like movement and simplicity. No need to bother them with details and cold, hard facts...if your product seems right for their needs, they will make a quick purchase. Most spontaneous visitors simply need to like you to convert.
When optimizing your content or strategy for a spontaneous persona, make sure to highlight your product or service, and make it shine bright. Since this persona converts rather quickly, they want to receive their purchase just as fast. Offers of free or fast shipping work well to capture the spontaneous buyer as well as limited-time offers or special daily deals.
3. Humanistic Persona
The humanistic persona tends to be a people-centered, empathetic individual. They make slow and emotional buying decisions because they value and seek relationships with the company they are buying from.
For this persona, highlight your mission and values and create a robust About Us page. Include pages like ‘Meet the Team’ or ‘Our Philosophy’ to attract the humanistic persona to your service or product. Display reviews and testimonials and focus your content on being trustworthy and authoritative.
4. Methodical Persona
The methodical persona enjoys the details and fine print and hates disorganization. This individual wants to know what your process is. Is there evidence of what you’re claiming your product or service can do? The methodical persona wants documentation of the truth. They want to know EXACTLY how your product or service can solve their problem. This persona makes slow, logical decisions when buying and is usually the most difficult to convert.
To win over the methodical buyer persona, use evidence to back up any claims and reputable testimonials. Provide facts and specifics on what you have to offer compared to your competitors. Offer product demos and real customer stories so they can see your product or service in action.
Understanding how each buyer persona thinks and acts will help you better target them and optimize your content and digital marketing strategy to meet their needs. Let Forthea show you the way, give us a call and find out how we can help take your marketing efforts to the next level!
