The Value of Buyer Personas
Does your contracting business use buyer personas as part of its marketing strategy?
If you haven’t heard of buyer personas, you could be missing out on qualified leads that have the potential to become long-time customers.
In this guide, you’ll learn what buyer personas have to offer you as a contractor and how to create personas that are a perfect match for your company’s services.
What Is a Buyer Persona?
Buyer personas are fictionalized profiles of high-value customers your business wants to target.
By understanding your company’s buyer personas, you understand your customers.
With a better understanding of your consumers, you can craft laser-focused marketing campaigns that speak directly to your customers’ unique interests, challenges, and pain points.
Benefits of Defining Buyer Personas
Buyer personas give your contracting company the edge when it comes to attracting new clients, building customer loyalty, and outperforming your strongest competition.
With a well-researched collection of buyer personas, your business can:
- Create content that appeals to your target customers. Sending the same promotional email to every customer on your list often yields disappointing results. Instead, you can send tailored messages to different buyer persona segments for improved click-through rates, responses, and sales.
- Develop new products and services based on market research. If your company isn’t offering the right product or service, customers will take their business elsewhere. Buyer personas help you expand your company’s offerings to meet the needs of current and prospective clients.
- Identify effective strategies for your sales team. Your company’s sales team plays a critical role in attracting new business. Buyer personas enable your sales team to more effectively engage with potential customers based on their problems, needs, and desires.
- Train your support team to resolve complaints and improve customer satisfaction. Exceptional customer service is the key to earning repeat business and positive client reviews. Buyer personas even help your support team handle frustrated and angry customers so they’ll be more likely to use your company’s services again.
Buyer Persona Examples
There are six main customer persona categories that your buyers can fit into:
- Bargain Brenda: Brenda is always on the lookout for special deals and discounts. She’s likely to respond to limited-time promotions, such as a free consultation for contracting services.
- Value Valerie: Valerie wants to make sure she’s getting the best value for her money. She’s a comparison shopper who will check pricing before committing to a contracting company.
- Busy Brad: Brad has a busy daily schedule, so he values time over money. He prefers companies that get the job done fast with minimal interruptions.
- Premium Paul: Paul wants the very best contracting services that money can buy. He’s motivated by luxury and doesn’t mind spending top dollar for high-end features.
- Loyal Lisa: Lisa sticks with the company she likes best, even if she can find better deals elsewhere.
- Innovative Ian: Ian wants the latest and greatest products on the market. He’s among the first to try new things and doesn’t mind the higher cost.
Buyer Persona Research
Every business is unique, so there is no one-size-fits-all buyer persona template that’s perfectly suited to the type of customers you serve.
You’ll need to do some research to identify the right buyer personas for your contracting company.
The research stage can seem overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure how to get started.
Fortunately, you likely already have access to several sources of information, most of which are low-cost or free:
- Check out your company’s online reviews to learn what customers like and don’t like about your services.
- Talk to your sales team to find out what kind of customers they interact with most often.
- Look at your competitors to learn the type of customers they serve.
- Monitor social media to identify customer sentiment and potential pain points. This practice, called social listening, can uncover trending topics that you can use to develop buyer personas.
- Survey current, former, and potential customers. This helps you collect demographic details and identify services that customers might be looking for.
How to Build Buyer Personas for Your Contracting Business
Once you’re ready to build your first buyer persona, you’ll want to gather as much data as possible. Each buyer persona should include:
- Demographic information, such as gender, age, location, education, marital status, job title, and income
- Hobbies and interests
- Pain points that your business can solve
- Goals that your company can help meet
- Challenges that the customer is facing
- Communication preferences, such as email, phone calls, text messages, or direct mail
- Where they get their information, including websites, videos, newspapers, and television
- The primary reason for choosing your company over others, such as good value for the money or luxury services
- Objections and reasons why the customer would not use your services
It’s important to ask detailed questions about your target customers to help you create accurate buyer personas. Questions you may want to ask include:
- What is a typical day like for this customer?
- How do they measure success personally and professionally?
- How do they make decisions?
- What is most important to them when they are considering a company like yours?
Once you’ve collected enough information, give each buyer persona a backstory, name, and photo to help you visualize your target customer.
Ideally, the name should be descriptive, such as “Savings Steve” or “High-End Harry,” so your team can quickly identify each buyer persona and what it represents.
What Are Negative Buyer Personas?
You may also want to identify negative customer personas or customers who your business prefers to avoid.
This information helps you spend less time and money marketing to customers who aren’t a good match for your products and services. Negative buyer personas can be customers who:
- Leave your company bad reviews
- Are difficult to work with or satisfy
- Have a high acquisition cost
- Complain about your prices or lack the budget for your services
Get Insights On Your Consumers With Contractor Marketing Experts
If you’d like assistance with developing buyer personas for your business, Contractor Growth Network is here to help. Contact us at (980) 449-4384 to learn how a marketing strategy can help you identify key traits about your consumers.
