After gathering valuable data-driven information from our platforms, it’s time to build actionable buyer personas that can be applied to performance marketing campaigns and help us shape an effective & relevant communication/targeting strategy. We use a template that consists of various elements, from demographical to psychographic data that help us understand our buyer personas, “who” they are and “why they are buying. Gathering psychographic data can be done via surveys and client interviews, but you can find a lot of hints in Google Analytics & FB audience insights as well. Now let’s stop talk the talk and just walk the walk.

Let’s assume that we own Google merchandise store (that we have data for) and we are allowed to create our own strategy (besides Google’s universal strategy).

Actionable Data-Driven Buyer Persona Template

• Buyer Persona Name (and/or nickname)
  The name or nickname gives you a quick overview of this specific buyer persona.  It doesn’t have to have a real name, but it should be something common that will help everyone understand the basic info of this persona.
• Image/Quote
  A relevant image and a representative quote would help us visually shape our buyer persona, avoiding long written description copy. Try to find an image with context and make a research in order to find a relevant quote for your persona.
• Demographics
  Initial data for each persona should include information such as age, gender, location, marital & employment status that can be used for messaging optimization & campaign targeting. Since we have e-commerce website we should consider buyer personas tech savvy level.
• Interests/Activities
  This section includes interests & affinities of our buyer persona. A normal buyer persona should have multiple interests that may overlap between personas. About activities, we should include not only work related topics but lifestyle topics as well (after all, we are talking to humans, not robots). What your users care about, how do their spend their day, what do they like etc. Those interests/activities can be used in Facebook & AdWords campaigns as targeting options.
• Preferred Websites/Apps
  From advertising placements perspective, preferred websites are the best guide. If your most valuable users are using YouTube heavily then you should consider to do video marketing and promote it on YouTube or Vimeo. Combining “preferred websites” with “interests” is a good way to create highly relevant concepts to specific advertising placements, do native advertising or a nice activation initiative with a specific website/app. This section can help us adjust our copy and content as well.
• Goals/Needs
  Here we include opinions goals & needs that are related with our buyer personas. What do they think, what are their goals, what do they want to achieve them, what are their needs/pains etc. After all, humans are emotional beings so the reasoning behind most of our decisions is emotion related. Five Factor Model is a good model that can help us understand the goals and needs of our personas. This section is valuable in terms of communication, copy & content rather than performance.
• When/Where/How/Why Persona uses our product
  By answering the questions above we can get actionable insights that can be used in our marketing campaigns. “When” can help us do efficient time adjustments in campaigns, “where” & “how” answer can help us incorporate priming effect in our ads while “why” can help us craft unique selling proposition copy that can increase our ad relevancy.

Based on data from previous post, our main buyer persona is Californian young male technophile professionals. I will create my persona and provide all the actions that I’ll do based on existing information.

Californian Young Male Technophile Professional

• Buyer Persona Name (and/or nickname)
  John Smith the Geek
• Image/Quote
  Image: Image of a “nerdy” young professional with glasses
  Quote: “AI is here to stay”
  

  Demographics	What can we do
  Age: 25-34	Apply age targeting in FB/AdWords campaigns (not strict one though, but “play around target ages)
  Gender: Male	Apply gender targeting in FB/AdWords campaigns, consider “unknown” gender as well
  Marital status: Married
  Employment status: Works as engineer	Apply interests targeting in FB/AdWords campaigns, include specific companies in FB targeting.
  Tech savvy: Yes
  Location: US, California	Apply location targeting in FB/AdWords campaigns, (add miles withing targeted area in FB)

   

   

  Interests/Activities	What can we do
  Participates in conferences	Participate/Sponsor those conferences
  Rarely clicks on ads	Invest in SEO
  Likes traveling	Do surveys and give travel prizes
  Likes Sports	Participate/Sponsor local sport events
  Reads blogs & forums	Build blog, provide relevant content
  Likes rock music	Hire a rockstar (I’m joking)

  
  
  

  Preferred Websites/Apps	What can we do
  YouTube, Facebook	Do display marketing in these specific channels
  Growthackers, Inbound, Quora, Medium	Answer questions, actively participate in forum discussions, re-post your blog posts
  SUMO	Provide a compelling offer in SUMO

  
  
  

  Goals/Needs	What can we do
  Openness to experience	Provide fresh, out of the box solutions
  Has lack of focus	Need to invest in remarketing in order to stay top of his mind
  Want to be up to date with his fellows/industry	Provide relative testimonials, include localized/industry social proof numbers
  Seeks self-actualization	Avoid buzzwords, Use images of people that seem successful and confident
  Don’t actively looks for offers, but likes VFM deals	Use anchoring effect & provide compelling offers

  
  
  

  When/Where/How/Why Persona use our product	What can we do
  Use our products in daily routine	Use photos of regular people that having fun, working out, relaxing at home
  Use our products at home	Use photos of married couples, being happy at their home
  Use our products because they love our brand	Make our logo visible and create products that are aligned with our brand’s strategy & style

  
  

This buyer personas framework help us build an efficient communication & performance strategy, especially when we target users that had no prior connection with us (new cookies) and had little or no awareness of our brand. So before you start spending budget, invest time & effort learning about your main buyer personas and talk to them like you know them.