Buyer personas can be a boon to your business. By creating profiles of your typical customers, how they behave, and how they respond to insurance marketing, you can inform both the development of your business products and your insurance marketing. However, you also need to understand what's missing from your personas. How do you improve them, and how do you complement them with information that will help you further hone your insurance marketing?
A Buyer Persona is Not a Job Description
A buyer persona is not a profile of an individual's job. For example, if you sell business insurance, your buyer persona should not be a profile of a business owner. According to Tony Zambito, "while profiling roles can be helpful for sales, the aim for buyer personas is to understand the range of behaviors, goals, scenarios, and specific mental models exhibited among people who are attempting to accomplish specific goals." Your personas should dig deep to look at the underlying motivations and behaviors of each persona rather than targeting one specific job description or household role.
A Buyer Persona Should Be Real
Everyone has stories from the insurance field, and often those stories take a prominent space in your mind. Don't let one or two anecdotes shape your buyer persona. Your personas must be based on real research with real people, not just on the most prominent anecdotes from your employees. According to Snap App, "The first step toward achieving reality with your buyer personas is to put in the time to research and interview your real customers and prospects."
Too Wide, Too Narrow
When you are creating buyer personas, you need to make sure that they're actually relevant to your insurance agency. One way to create an irrelevant persona is to develop one that is far too narrow or too wide. For example, if you're targeting all families who want to purchase home insurance, that's a large category, and it probably won't give you a lot of new marketing insight. Instead, target personas within this category, such as the parents of new teen drivers or families who are buying their first home.
Pain Points Are Key
Buyer personas must be vital to your marketing rather than static descriptions of different types of people. Adelle Revella says "You want to understand the personal or organizational circumstances that cause your buyers to allocate their time, budget, or political capital to resolve the pain." Your job is to determine what problems your customers have and how you can be the solution. Understand what results each persona wants to achieve.
Personas Don't Replace Other Research
Buyer personas can certainly help you target your insurance marketing, but they're not the only information you need. You still need sales statistics, an understanding of industry trends, and an overall view of your market. According to Tony Zambito, "the aim of buyer persona development is to understand the range of contextual scenarios and buying behaviors." This is just one piece of the larger sales puzzle. Don't rely on buyer personas to the detriment of your other market research. Allow them to complement it instead.
At American Agents Alliance, we know that sharing is important. That's why we've created networking and learning opportunities such as our annual American Agents Alliance Insurance Convention. Connect with other agencies and enhance your insurance marketing: contact us today.
