Software as a service solutions enable companies to quickly modify and adapt their strategies and have transformed the way businesses function.
Yet, the SaaS market is highly diverse, as each SaaS product caters to unique customer needs, making it difficult to create a universal marketing strategy for every potential customer they could ever have. Hence, SaaS companies should tailor their marketing strategies to reach the exact audience that would derive value from their product. This is precisely where SaaS buyer personas become essential.
What Are SaaS Buyer Personas and Why Are They Important?
A buyer persona refers to a fictional representation of the average SaaS buyer. They are constructed using data gathered from consumers whose purchasing patterns and choices are shaped by their distinct personalities and lifestyles.
SaaS buyer personas provide a deeper level of insight compared to the ideal customer profile (ICP), as they include demographic and psychographic data related to individuals within the organization. While ideal customer profiles concentrate on the characteristics of companies or organizations that are the best fit for your product or service, buyer personas are more individual-focused and delve into the characteristics and needs of individual customers.
Developing a buyer persona helps in comprehending user goals, pinpointing areas of concern, and identifying purchasing trends.
Here are some key benefits of creating your SaaS buyer personas.
- Targeted Marketing
- Better Product Development
- Improved Customer Service
- Content Relevance
- Higher Conversion Rates
- Cost Efficiency
- Competitive Advantage
6 Tips to Create and Effectively Target Buyer Personas for Your SaaS Business
The initial step in creating a SaaS buyer persona is to gather information about your ideal customer.
These steps will guide you in collecting data and creating your SaaS buyer personas.
#1. Conduct In-Depth Research to Identify Your Target Audience
Begin with comprehensive market research to identify your target audience. Once you have identified your target audience, you should analyze their demographics, behavior, and needs.
You can use online tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights, and customer data to gain insights into your audience. This will help you gather details such as location, age, interests, challenges, spending patterns, purchasing decisions, and so on.
Then, you should ask yourself key questions: Why do customers select your product? What factors motivate them? Are there any factors that deter customers? What are the primary objectives of your customers? Understanding customers’ goals and pain points is a way to uncover their intentions.
Understanding customer motivation and pain points can be effectively achieved by monitoring social sentiment and the social listening landscape. By keeping track of customer pain points, you can gain insights into how your product aligns as a potential solution.
Conducting customer interviews is an effective way of understanding their pain points. Task your sales and customer service teams with gaining insights into the prevalent user pain points, since they regularly engage with real customers.
After conducting interviews – ideally with a minimum of five individuals – you’ll probably start noticing patterns. Once your interviews are completed, streamline your findings by identifying common responses from your customers. You can also analyze your data to determine the important factors that shape your audience’s perception of your brand.
#2. Analyze The Data (Audience Segmentation)
Upon gathering the data related to your SaaS buyer personas, the next step is to conduct an analysis to derive valuable insights.
Begin by categorizing the responses to your survey based on various SaaS buyer demographics, including their job roles, industry affiliations, size of their organization, and so on. The process will provide you with deeper insights into how SaaS customers from diverse backgrounds perceive your SaaS product.
You should also delve into the responses provided by SaaS buyers concerning their purchasing patterns and inclinations. This will help you understand: What aspects of SaaS products do they find appealing? Are there particular features they consider essential but find lacking in existing SaaS offerings?
Following this, assess the discussions and insights from the focus groups and interviews that were held. Were there any common issues related to SaaS that SaaS buyers discussed? Did they propose any specific solutions to these issues?
These steps will help you develop SaaS customer personas with enhanced precision. The valuable details and insights you managed to collect from the interviews you conducted along with surveys and focus groups will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your SaaS customers and their specific requirements.
#3. Create SaaS Buyer Personas
With a clear understanding of your target audience base, the next step is to develop your unique SaaS customer personas.
Use the information and insights that you have acquired (refer to the previous section) to construct buyer personas that perfectly represent the requirements and preferences of SaaS buyers.
Begin by assigning a distinct name to each SaaS customer persona – for instance, Tim the Server Technician, Martha the Marketer, Cassie the CIO. (Alliteration can help reinforce these, plus it’s whimsical and a little fun.). Following this, incorporate all crucial details related to SaaS buyers within each persona, including their job roles, industry affiliations, size of the organization they are associated with, as well as their purchasing behaviors and preferences regarding SaaS products.
You have the option to tailor buyer personas to your specific requirements and identify the ideal match. You can create buyer personas based on their occupations, attributes, and other relevant factors.
#4. Focus Your Ad Campaigns With Targeted Messaging and Retargeting Tools
Apart from organic traffic, it’s probable that you’ll also be running advertisements. This is precisely where personas can be extremely valuable. They allow you to concentrate your ad campaigns with tailored messaging and landing pages to enhance your chances of success.
You also have the option to leverage ad retargeting tools to re-engage your audience with more targeted messaging, content, and landing pages which can result in higher conversion rates.
#5. Nurture Personas With Relevant Offers and Updates
An essential step in targeting and converting personas is maintaining a consistent nurturing process by providing relevant updates and offers. Segmenting based on persona becomes highly significant at this stage, as it ensures that your communication remains specific and valuable, rather than potentially becoming bothersome for those you engage with repeatedly.
In the case of SaaS, it’s unusual for a visitor to convert on their first website visit. This is due to the fact that the sales process is typically lengthier, involves higher stakes, and demands more effort from customers compared to other types of products.
You should ensure that your updates and offers are highly targeted toward what is most significant and engaging for the specific persona, as otherwise, they might opt to unsubscribe or begin ignoring your communications.
#6. Refine Your SaaS Buyer Personas Over Time
Developing your SaaS customer personas is an ongoing process. It’s necessary to periodically fine-tune them to align with the evolving requirements and preferences of SaaS customers.
For a SaaS organization, remaining current with SaaS trends and changes in customer behavior is of paramount importance.
If SaaS buyers have redirected their focus toward another feature or relevant industry, it’s important to update your customer personas to align with these changes.
Make sure to periodically assess the performance of SaaS products within the marketplace. This assessment will allow you to adjust your current SaaS customer personas and consider creating new ones for emerging markets within the SaaS industry.
Consistently fine-tuning your SaaS customer personas will ensure that your SaaS customers receive top-quality SaaS products and services that cater to their requirements.
Final Thoughts
SaaS buyer personas play a vital role in enabling SaaS companies to gain a deep understanding of their target customers. Creating these personas enables you to formulate more effective product strategies and sales tactics that will yield long-term success.
However, achieving this requires substantial research and analysis to achieve accuracy. At times, thinking creatively and expansively is necessary to ensure you cover all potential customer segments in your buyer personas.
You should always remember that customer personas are dynamic and should be constantly refreshed with fresh data. This will help you maintain a competitive edge and ensure that your SaaS products remain aligned with the evolving requirements of your target customer base.
Author bio
Andy Beohar is the Managing Partner at SevenAtoms, a leading B2B demand generation agency. SevenAtoms is dedicated to driving growth for SaaS and B2B businesses through innovative and optimized paid search and is recognized by Google as a Google Premier Ads partner. At SevenAtoms, Andy plays a strategic role in managing paid search campaigns.
