One of the most important skills in advertising and media is to put yourself into the shoes of your target group. A great way to change perspective is to create buyer personas.

1. Buyer Personas
An easy and effective checklist
with
SECRET
WEAPONS

2. In Marketing Communication you
need to think, feel and communicate
like your target group.

3. What is a buyer persona?
I have no
idea

4. A buyer persona is a
fictional character that
represents a segment of
your customers. Seems legit!

5. But how
do I create
one?

6. Buyer
Persona
Checklist
❏ Name and Photo
❏ Background Information
❏ Quote
❏ Goals
❏ Challenges, Fears and
Problems
❏ Values
❏ Buying Decision Process
❏ Solutions (Optional)

7. Let’s check it out!

8. Checkbox 1
Name and Photo

9. Questions to ask:
• What is a typical name for
someone in your target group?
• What does the person look like?

10. How to come up
with a name
• Talk to your sales managers. What’s the first
name that pops up their mind?
• Useful websites to find names and photos for
your personas are UI Names, UI Faces and
Random Users Generator.
SECRETWEAPON

11. Checkbox 2
Background
Information

12. Who is your character?
• Age, gender:
31 years old,
male
• Job: Creative
producer
• Education:
Bachelor’s
degree in
advertising and
PR
• Location: Los
Angeles (CA)
• Family
situation:
Single
• Archetype:
Straightforward
Advertising
Professional

13. Checkbox 3
Quote

14. What quote summarizes the
character of your buyer persona?
Example: “I don’t care working long hours, because
I love to create innovative campaigns for my clients.
Sometimes I wish the communication process with
my clients would be easier.”

15. Checkbox 4
Goals

16. Example (3-5 bullet points):
• Wants to get promoted
• Is eager to win awards for his advertising campaigns
• Wants to build great relationships with all of his clients
• Wants to be in control
• Looking for tools to be more effective
What are the person’s goals when
looking for a product or service?

17. Checkbox 5
Challenges, Fears
and Problems

18. What problems does your buyer
persona face right now?
Example (3-5 bullet points):
• Feels pressured by his workload
• Is stressed out by all the emails from clients
• Struggles to handle the communication
between his co-workers and his clients.

19. Checkbox 6
Values

20. What values and attitudes does
your persona have?
Example (3-5 bullet points):
• Seeking new ideas
• Freethinker
• Loves the art scene
• Practical minded and straightforward
• Loves the security of a stable income

21. Checkbox 7
Buying Decision
Process

22. How do they make a buying
decision?
Example (3-5 bullet points):
• Always busy, works long hours
• Prefers to gather his information online
• Believes in product referrals of bloggers
• Hates to get bothered by sales calls

23. Checkbox 8
Solutions (Optional)

24. How can you help your buyer persona
to reach his goals?
Example (1-3 sentences):
Filestage streamlines visual content reviews with
clients and co-workers. The web app helps David to
cut long email threads to capture all his client’s
feedback in one organized workspace.

25. Agreed!
That’s it. Really
simple, right?

26. What is
it?!
There is just one
missing piece ...

27. How do I gather data to
create a buyer persona?

28. Let’s do
this!
There are 6 Ways to
Gather Data

29. Way 1
Talk to Your
Customers

30. Use the 5-Why-
Technique
5 Whys is a question-asking technique to get to the root cause of a
problem. By repeating the question ‘Why?’ five times you can dig
deeper to uncover underlying problems. Each answer forms the
basis of the next “Why?” question.
Sure, you won’t ask “why” 5 times in a row to your client. But you
get the point. This technique is a thought-provoking impulse for
client communication, isn’t it?
SECRETWEAPON

31. Way 2
Set Up a Survey

32. Create an online customer survey.
• Send it out to customers within the target
group.
• Keep the whole survey short and simple.
No more than 10 questions.
• An old rule of thumb in market research
says: “The longer your survey, the less
people will take part.”

33. Way 3
Check Your (Site)
Analytics

34. Analytics give you a great
overview about typical visitors.
• Where did your visitors come from?
• What devices did they use?
• What sites and keywords did they search
before?

35. Way 4
Research on
Social Media

36. Surf the profiles of your most
active followers on Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn and all your
other social media profiles.
• You will find great information about job
positions and personal interests of your
target group

37. Way 5
Interview Customer
Support and Salespeople

38. Interview team members that
interact with customers on a
daily basis.
• You can set up personal interviews, a
group discussion or a survey to ask them
about the customers.
• But be warned: Employees are often stuck
in a routine. In many cases they are just
not able to identify the real problems of
your target group anymore.

39. Way 6
Distill Your
Research Data

40. Distill your data to its core.
• Look for patterns
• Filter out the commonalities in your data.
• The more things your data has in common,
the more important it is.

41. Awesome!
You can Download our Buyer
Persona Template for Free!
Click here to downlaodour powerful template

42. Takeaways
To build a great buyer persona you
should include these pieces of
information:
You can use these approaches to collect customer
insights:
1. Name & Photo
2. Background
3. Goals
4. Challenges and Fears
5. Values
6. Buying Decision
Process
7. Solutions
1. Talk to your customers
2. Set up a survey
3. Check your (site) analytics
4. Do research on social
media
5. Conduct interviews with
customer support and
salespeople

43. blog.filestage.io
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