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Part 2: Why You Need to Identify a Buyer Persona

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This article was last updated with relevant content in July 2024

In part 1 of our 5-part series about buyer personas, we discussed what a buyer persona is and what its three components are. To recap, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your very real target audience. It consists of a buyer profile, psychographics, and buying insights.

So, the question remains: why is identifying your buyer persona so important? It has been proven that when you do not identify your buyer persona, costly mistakes can happen. The famous American company, Apple Inc., learned this lesson in 2004:

Buyer Persona Fail: Apple, Inc.

You don’t typically see the Apple brand used as a bad example, but a fail on their part did take place in 2008 with the launch of its iPhone 4 in the Japanese market. It sold well in most other markets around the world but floundered in Japan. Apple discovered several things:

  • In 2008, Japanese people were already accustomed to using phones to shoot video and watch digital programming – the iPhone 4 didn’t have a camera.
  • Many other phones in Japan’s market included chips for debit card transactions and train passes, an additional feature that the iPhone 4 did not include.
  • It was significantly more expensive than phones that included cameras and chips.

Of course, Apple rebounded when it introduced the iPhone 5s four years later. However, because it did not identify its buyer persona in Japan, it did not see the profit it was expecting.

More than avoiding costly mistakes, take a look at three reasons why you need to identify a buyer persona:

Shopping Trends Have Drastically Changed

Consumers have a wealth of knowledge at the click of a button. They can search product or service reviews, gain feedback from their social networks, and compare products—all without the company directly interacting with the customer. With this new shopping trend, it’s even more imperative to determine who your buyers are and how to reach them. This will allow you to spend your finances more effectively and see a growth in sales.

Consumers Conduct Their Own Research

According to Adele Revella’s book Buyer Personas, “On average, business-to-business customers are nearly 60 percent of the way through the purchase decision before engaging a sales representative.”

Consumers are no longer engaging sales representatives to learn more about a product or service. By performing their own research, they are learning about a company’s product or services without the company even knowing it. Therefore, you have to communicate with your buyer in new ways.

The first step to communicating with your buyer is knowing who your buyer is (in other words, identifying your buyer persona).

Buyer Personas Provide a Framework

Knowing who your consumers are should not be a guessing game. By creating a buyer persona, you will have a framework to understand and communicate with buyers based on their individual and collective preferences. It will give you an important piece to your puzzle of success.

This article is part 2 of our 5-part series on buyer personas:

How M&R Marketing Can Help

It’s no secret – we’re obsessed with successful marketing tactics and helping our clients succeed. One way to do that is by understanding your buyer persona and intertwining it into your marketing strategy. When you team with M&R Marketing, you can expect us to put countless hours into each marketing strategy phase: discovery, plan creation, presentation, execution, and evaluation. Are you ready to partner with us? Give us a call at 478-220-4788 [tel link], and for more helpful tips, make sure you sign up for our eNewsletter!

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