Buyer personas are a semi-fictional representation of a business's ideal clients or target audience. The personas are created by conducting market research and analysing real data about existing customers.
Buyer personas, also referred to as marketing personas, are semi-fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. The representations are based on market research and real data about your existing customers, considering elements such as customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations and goals. Building accurate buyer personas and understanding them is vital to create content that appeals to your target audience. Understanding your personas also helps tailor the admissions experience to meet specific needs and expectations and address and solve the concerns of prospective students/parents. It also aids in service development, providing effective follow-ups and other student acquisition and retention processes.
The most effective personas are developed via market research and insight from existing customers, such as their feedback or survey answers. Buyer personas can not only help the school or college attract the right customers to their organisation, but it can also help identify which customers would not be a good fit- known as 'negative' buyer personas. The personas also allow the organisation to personalise and diversify its marketing, depending on which segment of its target audience, maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
How to create a buyer persona:
1. Define your audience
To create a buyer persona, the institution must first start with in-depth research into their current customers, prospects, students and supporters to record measurable information such as demographics. The relevant data can be gathered either from existing CRM systems, or through customer surveys or by using web and social analytics tools to see who is interacting with your organisation online.
Once the relevant insights are collected, competitors should also be analysed to see any missing target groups or segments. Conducting keyword research such as Google search terms will facilitate the persona profile as it allows institutions to see how their prospects to their research; knowing what words and phrases they use enables the school or college to rank highly by implementing the appropriate tags in content.
2. Outline the audience's pain points
The persona must capture the problems faced by potential customers, what needs to be solved, what barriers are they encountering and what is stopping them from achieving success. Social media channels can be monitored to capture mentions of your institution, competitors, services and keywords related to your industry. An internal survey from various departments like admissions will also uncover the most common questions received by students/parents. The data gathered from the internal and external analysis will help identify any patterns in the challenges faced by people concerning your school or college.
3. Outline the audience's goals
The audience's goals and aspirations are positive outcomes that students and their families wish to achieve; thus, the persona should also capture them. For educational institutions, they are usually personal goals or aspirations for their children. The persona's goals focus on getting to know one's audience, but the goals should also be directly related to the solutions provided by the school or college whenever this is possible. For example, a prospective student may have interests in sport, specifically rugby- do you provide the correct facilities, clubs or teams to help this student achieve his goals of playing rugby?
Suppose the persona's goals cannot be explicitly linked to what the institution is offering. In that case, they can also become the basis of marketing campaigns, informing the tone or theme of the approach taken. Goals and aspirations can be identified through social media listening, and the institution's customer service team can also provide insight into customer goals.
4. Outline how your organisation helps
Once the persona's pain points and goals have been identified, the institution must create a clear picture that showcases how the school or college can help. The school or college must focus on the benefits offered to students and their families, not just focus on the features and services provided. The institution must consider the buyer's point of view and focus on making their prospects and students' lives better.
5. Convert research into personas
The research's common characteristics must be grouped to form the basis of each unique customer persona, turning insights into accurate personas with whom the institution can speak. Each persona created should have a name, a job title, a home, pain points, goals and other defining characteristics to make it seem as real as possible without getting too specific.
An example of a customer persona would be:
Social Sally
- 45 years old
- Lives in a village in rural England
- Works in the family business, which her husband runs
- Has 2 children, primary age but soon to be looking at senior schools
- Has a large social circle, and they enjoy regular dinners and events
- Wealthy and enjoys a busy lifestyle with lots of family holidays
Personas are the semi-realistic descriptions of people who represent a segment of the institution's customer base. Not all customers in a group will fully match all of the characteristics of their assigned persona, and that is not an issue as the personas' purpose is to allow your institution to think about clients in a human way, rather than a collection of data points.
6. Use personas to plan marketing efforts
After building clear profiles for your institution's personas and the target audience has been defined, the insights and generalisations captured through their pain points and goals can be used for marketing and content strategies. The school or college should provide at least five pieces of content that showcase how they provide value to their customers and how they help solve pain points and achieve goals. The customer personas should be considered for every decision concerning the institution or their marketing strategy, as the content and the services must be valued by customers and help the organisation build long-term relationships with the customers they represent.