Buyer personas have become a widely accepted marketing strategy. Therefore, it is the right time to course-correct it. It is because, for most companies, buyer personas have become air-filled, attractive objects that can positively impact the quality of marketing efforts.
Creating the right buyer personas can bring so many opportunities. It can let you set new marketing goals and shiny strategies to grow your business.
( Also Read: Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid )
Common mistakes to avoid while creating a buyer persona
However, when it’s about creating buyer personas, people make various common mistakes. Some of the most common mistakes of these are enlisted below:
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Profiling Ideal Buyers, Not Real Buyers
When it’s about to set out buyer personas definition, instead of identifying how their real customers will look, businesses prefer to define how they want their customers to look.
Always remember that buyer personas are here to let you understand your existing clients while uncovering the problems and motivations driving them to buy from you. It is because this will let you revolve your marketing efforts around their wants and needs. Ultimately, attracting more potential customers will become easier.
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Over-Relying on Anecdotes
Marketers commonly have a host of customers anecdotes drawn from years of combined experience at their disposal. Even though these anecdotes can be value-added for buyer personas, over-relying on these can distort its accuracy.
In short, discussing these tales is a great idea, but your buyer personas must be backed by data and insights.
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Fixating on Demographic Information
For identifying your business leads quickly, using demographic information would be great. However, even great demographic data can’t translate into anything speculating, commonly. It is because businesses fixating on demographic information won’t uncover the real insights required for improving marketing campaigns. So, it is always better to focus on the pain points and motivations that can drive more sales.
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Using a Small Sample Size
While doing any research working on decent sample size is essential. It is essential to ensure that your analysis is right. It is because, with a decent sample size, drawing statistical analysis to parallels will become easier.
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Reading Too Much into Your Stock Photos
You can personalize your persona by adding a value-added stock photo into it. However, it’s never going to be a perfect buyer representation. Leading your marketing efforts with it can cause a considerable deviation from the intended audience. So, prefer going into details of information and insights instead of reading too much into your stock photos to make the most out of it.
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Creating Too Many Personas
Enthusiastic marketers usually prefer creating too many buyer personas. Well, this isn’t the right thing to do. Instead of spending hours on creating multiple buyer personas, you should prefer to uncover their pain points, motivations, and other important information into one buyer persona for a more refined analysis.
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Not Including Negative Personas
For all the reasons you want to profile your ideal customers, creating a negative persona is also essential. It is because this will let you identify someone better to avoid as a buyer in the future. So, ensure to create a negative persona as well after completing a positive buyer persona and include it as a finishing touch there.
Final Thought
Buyer personas are an effective tool. It is because these can influence your marketing efforts from content development to determining the critical needs of customers. So, ensure to avoid making the above-mentioned mistakes when you are creating buyer personas.
