A buyer persona defines your ideal buyers, starting from purchasing behavior to discussing waste collection. Using the right tools to identify the buyer personas for your business can ensure repeat customers.
By Samuele Barrili
Do you know who your customers are? I am sure that you are answering: “Obviously I know them.” I have heard this answer several times and what I discovered when asking for more details is that while you know the surface details, you generally do not know them in depth. What do I mean?
As a marketer, we qualify customers differently. That means that we categorize them in connection with many different aspects. In this article, I will give you the tools to identify the buyer personas for your business.
What is Buyer Persona?
Using the definition shared by HubSpot, a buyer persona is “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer based on data, interviews, and some educated guesses. It is essentially a definition of your ideal buyer presented in a way that sounds like it’s talking about a specific person.”
As you can see, a buyer persona defines your ideal buyers, starting from purchasing behavior up to the size of their houses or discussing the waste collection from companies for the quantity and type of waste they give you.
For that, it is important to qualify and categorize them for common points. The advantages to doing this are:
1. You will be able to define a specific offer to increase the monthly quantity of a specific waste to supply to one of your secondary raw materials clients.
2. You will be able to schedule a more efficient waste collection,reducing the cost of collection and increasing the sustainability of your waste collection.
3. You will be able to create a forecast plan at the beginning of the year, obtaining better prices for the secondary raw materials, and creating long-term agreements with your clients.
Defining Buyer Persona
Thanks to the definition of the buyer personas, you will be able to increase the revenues of your waste management company in multiple ways. Now let’s go on to how to define the buyer personas of your business.
The first step is to analyze your customer database and select those with common traits. Consider the following:
• Type of customer: Company or private
• Waste type: Paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, organic, e-waste, organic, etc.
• Frequency of waste disposal: Daily, bi-weekly, tri-weekly, weekly, monthly, every two months, every three months, every six months, etc.
Now that you have identified these common traits in your customers’ database, it is time to identify their personal traits:
• If they are a company: Who is the person that interacts with you or your team? Is it a woman or a man?
• If they are private: Is it a woman or a man who is the main contact?
• What is their job? Employees? Company owners? Artisans? Etc.
• What is their role? Managers? Salesman? Data Enter? Owners? Etc.
• What are their hobbies? Grilling? Sportcars? Cooking? Reading? Gardening? Golfing?
• Are they active in saving the environment?
• What type of food do they buy? Organic? Biological? Fast Food?
• What type of car do they drive? Electric? Hybrid? Classical? SUV?
• Do they have children? How many? How old are they?
• Where are they going to school?
Now, define a single person for each one of the categories that you identified under the common traits. This means that you should create an avatar of a person that identifies the characteristics. For example, Samuele is a company owner without children that lives in a house in the center of town, purchases organic foods, involved in saving the environment, spends time reading, passionate about classic cars, and loves cooking and grilling. You should include under Samuele’s
avatar all the men that are company owners who purchase organic foods are environmental enthusiasts, are passionate about classic cars, and love cooking.
With this process, you should divide your customers’ database into no more than three Buyer Personas in order to simplify the complexity of your single customer, and at the same time, give you the possibility to rapidly identify every new client.
Let me give you another perspective on the use of the Buyer Persona. You can create a form for your sales department to use in the early stages of the qualification process. That will help the sales team to categorize the new potential customers into one of the three Buyer Persona categories, allowing you to create a specific offer for each Buyer Persona. This helps your sales department increase the closing rate, and you will satisfy your customers better than your competitors.
Client Trust
What happens when you find someone that offers you the solution for your real needs? You trust him. By having the trust of your clients, you are putting armor on your business. Even if your competitors decrease their prices, moving the competition on the price level, your clients will be less likely to leave you because you know them on a personal level. This may seem strange in the waste industry, but human behavior is the same in all purchasing processes.
Start applying this strategy to your waste management business, and your results will change faster than you think. Most importantly, as soon as you start, you will be able to protect your customer database—the most important asset of your company. | WA
Samuele Barrili is an Italian Marketer, TV Host, Podcaster, and Author. Born in Cagliari, Italy, Samuele began his career as a salesman in 2010. After earning a degree in Toxicological Chemistry at the University of Cagliari (Sardinia), he decided to dedicate himself to studying and discovering the art of sales. After nine years in the field, working as sales and marketing manager for national and international firms involved in chemicals, electromechanical, and waste management, Samuele created MiM Marketing Interim Managers, the first interim company focused on marketing for waste management companies. MiM company originates from the combination of the knowledge of chemistry combined with the knowledge of direct response marketing. Marketing4Waste is the first marketing service totally dedicated to waste management companies. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit www.marketing4waste.com.