1. Using scripted questions
It's hard not to get sucked into reading word-for-word questions off of a piece of paper during interviews with your clients or buyers. Unfortunately, these types of scripted calls or face-to-face interviews won't reveal anything you don't already know. These types of questions fail to bring about the insights you really need. Although it takes practice, the way you want to avoid this mistake is to learn how to have unscripted, natural conversations that stay on topic, but lead buyers to tell you details about how they reached their purchasing decisions. This will allow you to formulate probing questions based on your buyer's answers. If your buyer says they chose certain services because they were easy to navigate, then you might ask what ares and why they are considered "easy" in their minds. It's also important to stay on track and make sure you're asking appropriate questions to obtain optimal information about their buying habits, buying objectives, success factors, pain points, and decision criteria.
2. Making stuff up about buyers
As marketers we like to research for our own information about buyers by talking to sales reps, clients, or looking online. However, these sources don't have all of the information that we need to create an accurate buyer persona. If you want to successfully use buyer personas, you'll need to uncover specific facts that are unknown to your competitors. The only way to gain this valuable insight is to have direct conversations with your buyers. You'll have to set a goal of interviewing recent buyers for a few hours each month, including those who picked your services and those who did not. These in-depth conversations should last about 20-30 minutes, and will give you all the information you need so that assumptions are not necessary.
3. Getting tied down by a photo
Part of the buyer persona creation process is choosing a stock photo that represents the physical image of your persona. While these pictures are valuable, you don't want to get bogged down with choosing the right one, or with developing your persona based on just this image. It's quite easy to begin to make attributes up about your buyer persona once you see a picture of him or her. Since we are storytellers, it wouldn't be unusual to get carried away with a good story just based on how the picture looks. To avoid this, we recommend fleshing out your buyer persona in writing first, followed by choosing a face to represent it.
4. Creating too many buyer personas
Another tempting mistake that may arise is the desire to create too many buyer personas. It may feel like you're being enthusiastic and just want to cover all of the assorted buyers that your business encounters, but a buyer persona for every job position or industry is not necessary. Once you start interviewing your customers, you'll see that differences in job title, company size, or industry do not always relate to differences in your insights. For most of your marketing decisions, you will only need a separate buyer persona when there is a significant differences on several of your findings. Group buyers should be able to be identified from your interviews. You'll finish with a clear picture of a handful of people your business can successfully target with the right content.
Creating ideal buyer personas for your business can be your stepping stone to success. By conducting the correct research and avoiding common mistakes, you'll be ahead of your competition in developing and mastering the right content for the right people. Make the conversation with your customers natural and agenda-based and you'll be on your way to having a strong marketing foundation for your business.