What actors can teach marketers about buyer personas. When Actors land a role to play, they need to memorize their lines but for their delivery to be believable, they need to become the character. Actors become the character they play by doing research. This research is conducted by: reading books/watching videos about the life of the character, conducting interviews with the real life person if they are alive and/or meeting with people who knew them.

1. Image via Garrison Everest
What Actors can Teach us about
Consumer Marketing
When Actors land a role to play, they need to memorize their lines but for
their delivery to be believable, they need to become the character. Actors
become the character they play by doing research. This research is conducted
by: reading books/watching videos about the life of the character, conducting
interviews with the real life person if they are alive and/or meeting with
people who knew them.
From this research, actors can identify the strengths, weaknesses, challenges
and pain points in this person’s life; all of which can help them successfully
become this person.
How this Research is applied to Customer Marketing

2. Successful Marketers have to conduct similar research to identify their target
customer. For Marketing to be successful, businesses must understandtheir
target market; analyzing their ideal customer similar to what Actor needto
do.
To analyze this ideal customer, businesses needto do research to understand
the life of their ideal customer. The result of this research is known as a Buyer
Persona. According to research conducted by MarkteingSherpa: Marketers
generated 171 % more revenue as result of using buyerpersonas.
According to research by the BuyerPersona Institute in 2016:
1.27% of businesses have no buyer persona
2. 44% of businesses have a buyer persona

3. 3. interest in having buyerpersonas is growing as 29% of businesses surveyed
said will have them in the next year.

5. Creating a Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a guide to understanding the needs, challenges and pain
points of customers.
Questions to ask
What are these customer’s habits?
What concerns, needs and challenges do they have?
What actions are customers taking to address their needs and challenges?
Why do customers need to take these actions?
This question may be applied to multiple action steps described in Hooked by
Nir Eyal as the 5 Whys.
What makes them want to buy?
Where do they look for information?
What type of content and medium do they use access the information?
What days and times are they most likely to look for information and consume
content?
It is important to note that businesses with multiple products and more than
one target market will need to create buyerpersonas for each ideal customer.

6. image via content marketing institute /Bigstock
Where to obtain information on the Ideal Customer
1. Interview current customers and prospects.
2. Send out targeted surveys via email, direct mail and on Social Networks.
Offer incentives such as gift cards and discounts to encourage people to
provide the information needed.
3. Read biography and history books about your ideal customer.
4. Study the news.

7. 5. Study existing research conducted by Market Research firms.
Building buyer personas will result in:
1. Creating and implementing better and more targeted product messaging
and communication
2. Getting the product in front of customers who truly will benefit from its use
This is how to create a BuyerPersona.
How are you using your buyer personas? Comment below.
Article sources & images
Garrison Everest
Content Marketing Institute
MarketingSherpa.com/intecnic.com
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