Why is buyer persona important?

KYC is not easy

==How often do you have an opportunity to listen to your customers describe their problems?== The answer is probably NEVER if you are an employee positioned in a non-marketing department of a large company.

If you do have the chance, two things lie at the core of the ==buyer persona concept,==

1. asking probing questions
2. listening

==KYC (knowing your customer)== is not easy. e.g. iPhone 3G was not selling well in Japan in 2008. Japanese customers were accustomed to using phones to shoot videos / pay with debit card chips / train pass chips.

A buyer's profile is good but not enough

A generic buyer profile cannot make marketer understand exactly what determine’s the buyer’s buying decision. Marketers are just guessing based on demographics (age, income, marital status, education) or psychographics (personality, values, lifestyles, opinions).

The buyer profile can still give some obvious answers though. e.g. reaching CFO via an email campaign is so difficult. Emphasizing the spaciousness of the car’s cargo for a large dog is not useful for a busy woman that only raises goldfishes.

Rather than guessing, the most effective way to build buyer personas is to interview buyers who have previously weighed their options, considered or rejected solutions and made a decision similar to the one you want to influence.

Buyer persona = buyer profile (who will buy) + buyer insights (when/how/why to buy)