Defining and strengthening your buyer personas is one of the key steps in developing a marketing strategy. However, it can give you a headache. What are the right questions to ask? How to get the best information about your customers?
Beyond pure market research, data collection can help you reinforce your buyer personas with detailed and clear information about your audience. We explain how to do it…
What is a buyer persona?
Let’s go back to the basics. According to HubSpot, a buyer persona is a “semi-fictional person representing your ideal customer, based on market research and data collected from real customers.”
Your ideal customer profile will generally include information on:
- Their demographics;
- Their motivations;
- Their goals regarding the purchase of your product or service;
- The challenges they face;
- And many others.
Don’t forget to give it a name, a face and a job, and you’re ready to talk to them for your marketing messages and communication.
How can data collection help you reinforce your buyer personas?
Having a data collection strategy allows you to get accurate and quantified information about your audience. Thanks to it, you can confirm your customer profiles with analytical data from various reliable sources.
Check your social networks’ analytics
Your social networks are key points of communication and engagement with your audience. It is therefore normal to collect data on it via the analytics of your Facebook or LinkedIn pages, for example.
You will gather information about the demographics, interests and even readings of your audience. Besides, the social network on which your customers and prospects are active also says a lot about them (source).
But social media are not just a mine of numbers. You will be able to get information on the needs and questions of your audience by joining groups and forums, and also by participating in Twitter Chats. A way to acquire new information while engaging directly with your audience.
Create a survey, quiz or personality test
Collecting data with a survey, quiz or personality test? It couldn’t be easier. You ask the questions that you think are most relevant, directly to your audience. It’s all about asking nicely… or offering compensation.
With the Qualifio platform, you can create a customized survey and collect the data you need for your research. Thanks to our statistics tab, it is easy to analyze the information received in the blink of an eye. All this without technical skills.
Thanks to the campaign formats offered by Qualifio, you can collect data directly at the source in a very entertaining way. These first-party data are the basis of your research to create your buyer personas. And with our GDPR Toolbox, you are in compliance with the EU data protection rules.
The data collected will then answer your questions about demographics, interests and much more. The best? Only your most engaged audience will participate, which is much better than using the generic data provided by social media.
And then what?
Once you have collected your data, we suggest that you add an additional layer to your analysis: create one or more profiles depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey on which your fictional customer is supposed to be located. This additional step will then help you develop a more elaborate content strategy.
