Summary:
Creating buyer personas is a good way for banks to familiarize themselves with their customer base and then create focused, relevant content and more targeted ads. The process also allows you to attract more ideal customers in the future. A typical bank can have anywhere from one to a dozen personas, but it’s recommended to start with one and move on from there once you’ve gotten the hang of it.
One of the best aspects of buyer personas is that they allow you to create personalized marketing strategies for different audiences. Instead of sending a one-size-fits-all email to all of your customers or prospects, you can adapt them based on buyer persona and lifecycle stage (how long they’ve been a prospect and/or customer). This allows you to optimize content for that specific group, increasing your targeting capability. Now that we covered the basics, let’s go into a bit of detail about how to create these buyer personas:
Do the Research
Everything starts with research. You need to have an idea of who your best customers are before you can create a persona based on the group. There are several ways to conduct this research: Check your core banking platform for trends, use key form fields on your website forms (avoid asking for too much info, however), ask your different banking teams what their best customers have in common, or even interview customers and prospects.
Identify Patterns
See if there are commonalities like their background, age, career, and other demographics. It’s also a good idea to understand what personal interests these groups have in common, as all of this information will make it easier for you to cluster the general similarities together in order to create personas.
Develop Persona Motivations
This is the part where the interviews come in handy. Use the information to flesh out your persona’s fears and aspirations. Make connections between these and specific ways in which your bank can help them achieve goals and safeguard against their worries and concerns.
Personalize
Bring interview quotes into the persona formulation process. These should showcase their concerns, who they are, and what they want. Create a list of questions or objections they could raise during a conversation with your bankers so that they’ll be better prepared to handle prospect concerns.
Start Creating Targeted Messaging
Once you’ve got your personas, create some persona-specific messaging for your prospects. Discuss with your team which products and services would be most appealing to prospects and create a pitch that includes these. You can also take this time to adapt vernacular based upon the persona of your prospect, ensuring that your team is all speaking the same language.
For more detailed info about how to create buyer personas for banks (and for some cool templates that will help walk you through the process), check out our comprehensive guide, entitled How to Create a Buyer Persona for Your Bank for even more information on how to get started!
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