Building a buyer persona is a cornerstone to any marketing strategy. Not only that, a company that is unable to empathize with its target customers can never hope to be customer-driven. And, if you don't know your customers and their goals, objectives, or pain points, your marketing programs will never produce the ROI you want.

Your success starts in prioritizing and understanding your market segments and the persona(s) who live in those segments. But completing a buyer persona template is not just a rote exercise. Every component must be carefully considered. These 10 steps will guide you to success in both creating a high quality buyer persona, and more importantly, aligning your sales and marketing teams for success.

Be sure to download the PDF of the complete course presentation. (You can find the download button in the Udemy tools section to the right of the video screen.)

If you have a mountain of up-to-date market research at your finger tips, then building a persona can be an easy exercise. However, life is not always easy.

• How do you build a persona if you don't have any market research budget?
• What if your marketing intelligence and information is incomplete?

If you create a persona by yourself, alone, you will not succeed. It's a team sport. Here's how you can set up your team and manage expectations for success.

Part 1 of the persona template is focused on demographics.

Completing the persona template should not be a rote exercise. Every element included in your persona must be relevant and have meaning. And there are indeed precise implications for every piece of data you will include. That means you will want to be very selective in deciding what information to include vs. what is not relevant. Before you start customizing your own persona, consider the basics shared in this lesson.

Be sure to download the "persona template" file (Microsoft PowerPoint). You can refer to this template in the lectures on Steps 4, 5, 6, and 7. (You can find the download button in the Udemy tools window to the right of the video screen.)

Part 2 of the persona template is critical for any B2B marketing programs: understanding the company profile of where the persona works. This element is the one most often missed or excluded from other persona exercises and templates you may have used in the past!

In addition to knowing the basic demographics of our target persona, we also need to know some information about the company they work for. Let's say you want to target all Chief Information Officers. Bill and Bob are two Chief Information Officers at two different technology companies that you want to target. They both follow the same industry trends and offer competing solutions to solve related customer problems. So far they sound the same. However, Bill works for a Fortune 500 company with 100,000 employees; Bill works for a start-up with 25 employees. Does that matter? Maybe. Elements of the persona's workplace, company culture, and business goals may be very different and very relevant. This persona dimension often provides important clues in who you should target and why Bill and Bob sometimes behave differently even though their demographics may be similar.

Part 3 of our persona template captures psychographics. This important dimension helps us understand how they think, how they make purchase decisions, and why they behave like they do. The more we understand the psychology of the buyer, the more in tune we can be with them. This will lead to our creating better, more relevant messages that matter to the target customer.

Step 7 unveils several real persona examples created by real marketers. Each persona tells a story, and each company learned some important lessons about their customers. Marketers also learned how to use the exercise to align their sales and marketing teams and achieve great success in their marketing campaigns.

Be sure to download the PDF of persona examples. These are the same slides used in this lecture. (You can find the download button in the Udemy tools window to the right of the video screen.)

Sharing your persona with colleagues is not only a good idea, its a requirement for success. If you don't, you run a risk of inciting "not invented here" syndrome. That's when others in your organization criticize your work and fail to embrace your marketing recommendations. You can avoid this by making the time to socialize your draft persona and inviting feedback. This lesson offers a few tips to help you manage internal politics and keep your marketing plans on track.

Congratulations! You've completed your persona. Now, what do you do with it?

The persona is only as good as how you apply it. This lesson offers a prescription for immediately applying the persona in three foundational next-step exercises:

1. Building a clear and focused positioning statement that defines how and why our product is different and better than the nearest competitive alternative.
2. Drafting a crisp elevator pitch using customer-ready messaging, via my unique "message box" exercise.
3. Designing effective marketing blueprints to illustrate how your content marketing strategy will come to life for your target persona.

This lesson reveals what you need to know and where you can get additional information on these 3 critical elements necessary for every marketing strategy.

Step 10 offers a quick perspective on how to put the knowledge you've gained from this course to immediate use. There is no reason why you can't now gather a few colleagues over lunch to brainstorm your first persona. Don't be intimidated by this dynamic, ongoing process. Your persona-development skills will improve each time to guide the exercise.

In Exercise 2, I'd like you to craft your own persona. You can use the PowerPoint template I shared in Step 4 (see downloadable materials found in Step 4), or you can create your own. Turn the target audience description you provided in Exercise 1 into a proper persona following the 10-step process.

Since I first introduced this course in 2013 I've received a number of questions from students. This short video provides a few answers to some common questions:

1. How can/should market research inform your persona?
2. What is the downside of using a persona?
3. How do you know if you have the right persona?
4. How should I evolve personas over time?

If you have other questions you'd like me to address, please write to me via Udemy. I'll include your questions and answers in additional FAQ videos.

Congratulations! You've taken your first step on the path to the "Marketing High Ground" -- that mystical place where you understand the customers so well that you become acknowledged and valued within your company as the "customers' advocate". This should always be the goal of all marketers. Everyone on the marketing team can benefit from taking a few moments each day to remember who their customers are and what they care most about. Doing so will make you more effective in your planning and execution of marketing campaigns, programs, activities, and offers.
This lecture points you to some additional books and online courses you may also find of interest in your pursuit of the Marketing High Ground.

1. The Marketing High Ground: the essential playbook for B2B marketing practitioners everywhere (paperback)
2. Marketing Campaign Development: what marketing executives need to know about architecting global integrated marketing campaigns (paperback)
3. Product Management & Marketing: Positioning -- how to build a product positioning statement (Udemy online course)
4. Tell Your Story: How to Create Your Best Elevator Pitch -- how to build better customer messaging (Udemy online course)

Now that you've completed your persona, what can you do with it? Check out these additional marketing best-practices courses available on Udemy. Links to these courses are noted in the External Resources.

With a persona in hand, you can then use it to build a crisp and focused product positioning statement aimed at the persona. Then, your next step will be to craft customer-ready messaging, again referencing the persona.

Mastering Customer & Partner Interviews guides you in how to professionally interview your customers and partners with ease. This is the key skill that will help you refine your understanding of the buyer's journey, your personas, product positioning, and the effectiveness of your messaging.

Remember: whoever understands the customer best wins! Allow these courses to inspire you as you discover how to differentiate your products and services from your competitor's.