How to define the buyer personas for your book.

In this article, I’ll be diving into how to find and define the buyer personas for your book.

Personas, sometimes referred to as Avatars, are an amazingly powerful tool for creating your book marketing messages that are laser targeted. Do this well and you will have sold your first 1000 books in no time at all.

Hi I’m Ian Bosler, I started “Intertype publish and print” back in 2004. Since then I’ve been on a mission to disrupt the traditional publishing industry and remove all the BS content creators must put up with. These “quickie” training modules will help you build the solid foundations needed to deliver a successful publishing project.

In the last two episodes of Saturday Secrets we looked at two other elements of the foundation framework of the Marketing Pyramid. To recap the Marketing Pyramid consists of three frameworks:

1. Foundations
2. Systems
3. Media

The Foundation framework consists of 3 elements:

1. Your goals for your book (Episode 3)
2. Target Audience (Episode 4)
3. Personas (This Episode)

So what is a Buyer Persona?

Put simply, buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. 

Ideally they are created based on real data about customer demographics along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, concerns etc. I stress that IDEALLY a persona is based on real data. With many authors, real data doesn’t exist but never fear, there are ways around that. 

Why is it important?

Personas are valuable because they facilitate you and your team to focus communications on your ideal buyer. Prospects are more likely to purchase if your communications are directed at them and demonstrate an understanding of their issues and problems. 

But I don’t have any data?

I previous episodes I’ve talked about the three main sources of buyers for your book:

1. Buyers fan base
2. Existing Fan base
3. Influence’s fan base

The rolled gold best source of data is your Buyers Fan Base. These people have already brought from you. If you set up your author platform correctly, you will gather the appropriate data to analyse and refine your ideal reader / buyer. The chances are your book buyers are connected to like-minded people so leveraging these relationships with referral focused communications will lead to faster sales.

The second-best source of data is your fan base. You can’t be 100% sure who will be an ideal book buyer when you start out marketing your book however you’re likely to find them within your fan base so it’s always best to start there.

Finally an influencer’s fan base is much the same as marketing cold UNLESS you have already tested and refined your persona with your own fan and buyer bases. 

What does a Persona Look Like?

The following are the key attributes you should try and complete to create the Persona of your ideal buyer:

BACKGROUND:

• Basic details about persona’s role
• Key information about the persona’s company
• Relevant background info, like education or hobbies

DEMOGRAPHICS:

• Gender
• Age Range
• HH Income (Consider a spouse’s income, if relevant)
• Urbanicity (Is your persona urban, suburban, or rural?)

IDENTIFIERS:

• Buzz words
• Mannerisms

GOALS:

• Persona’s primary goal
• Persona’s secondary goal

CHALLENGES:

• Primary challenge to persona’s success
• Secondary challenge to persona’s success

HOW WE HELP:

• How you solve your persona’s challenges
• How you help your persona achieve goals

REAL QUOTES:

• Include a few real quotes – taken during your interviews – that represent your persona well. This will make it easier for employees to relate to and understand your persona.

COMMON OBJECTIONS:

• Identify the most common objections your persona will raise during the sales process.

MARKETING MESSAGING:

• How should you describe your solution to your persona?

ELEVATOR PITCH:

• Make describing your solution simple and consistent across everyone in your company.

I know, there is a lot to cover, but it’s worth making the effort.

The following is an example of what a complete Persona looks like. Before I dive into it, some background.

1. Author’s goals for the book. 
   1. To position the author as an expert and authority in the field of telephone skills that deliver business results.
2. Target Market
   1. The target market is small to medium business owners who need to improve sales results without relying on face to face meetings.

NAME:

• Julie Sample

BACKGROUND:

• Owns a small printing company
• Started the business in 2004 and has enjoyed steady growth ever since until a major economic shock dramatically reduced revenue
• Married with 2 children (22 and20)

DEMOGRAPHICS:

• Female
• Age 45-60
• Dual HH Income: $140,000
• Suburban

IDENTIFIERS:

• Calm demeanor
• Probably has an assistant screening calls
• Active on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Asks to receive collateral mailed/printed

GOALS:

• Build back revenue base
• Keep the business viable

CHALLENGES:

• Getting everything done with a small team
• Rolling out changes to the entire company

HOW WE HELP:

• Simple approach to dealing with customer service and sales calls 
• Framework for winning sales script
• How to follow up for success

REAL QUOTES:

• “It’s been difficult getting company-wide adoption of new methods in the past.”
• “I don’t have time to train employees on how to use the phone effectively”
• “It’s been really painful dealing with the wash up of lost customers.”

COMMON OBJECTIONS:

• I’m worried this approach won’t work for my business
• I don’t want to have to train the entire company on how to use a new system.

MARKETING MESSAGING:

• Simple to follow tool kit for every phone using employee

ELEVATOR PITCH:

• Quickly grow your business by answering every phone call the right way, turn more enquiries into sales, develop a winning sales script and follow up for the ultimate success. 

I know, there is a lot to cover however, it’s worth making the effort and please remember:

1. A complete, well thought out persona is “marketing gold”
2. Don’t stress if you can’t pull it all together at the start
3. It’s OK to evolve your persona over time

Finally, I want to leave you with one piece of advice:

It’s OK to have more than one persona BUT it‘s not OK to communicate with multiple personas at the same time.