As business owners, we tend to put emphasis on attracting the right buyers. But in order to understand who the right buyers are, we have to also define the wrong ones.
A negative buyer persona is exactly that. Contrary to a regular buyer persona, it’s a detailed outline defining the types of buyers that may not be our ideal customers. Understanding your negative personas yields better efficiency in your marketing and sales processes, allowing you to spend more time on the right leads.
Steps to Building Your Negative Buyer Persona
Assess your current buyers
- Identify buyers who wound up being a bad fit for your business.
- Who complained often?
- Who drained resources or took way too long to close?
- Who cost you money, digging into your profits?
Analyze leads that never converted
- Review data for those who engaged with your business but never closed
- Assess the possible reasons they didn’t move forward with a purchase
- Was their engagement too early in their buyer’s journey?
- Did they not receive the information they needed to make a purchase?
- Were they looking for free resources and had no intention to buy?
- Did they lack budget or authority to make the final decision?
Chat with your team
- Your sales and customer services teams are valuable, involve them in this process
- Ask sales who wastes time on calls but doesn’t close
- Ask customer service who submits excessive requests
Analyze your content and lead sources
- Are you attracting leads that are looking for free resources over paid solutions?
- Is your content providing helpful information, but still driving action?
- Is your content being delivered at the right stages of the buyer’s journey?
- Are you providing too much information and overwhelming the buyer?
Collect and document the details
- Collect all of the information in the above tasks and organize into a single document
- Include additional information such as:
- How they learned about your company
- How they engaged with your content/business
- Behaviour patterns (consumes free content, never buys)
- Common objections
- Common complaints or reasons for excessive service requests
Refine over time
- Your negative personas may change over time, so be sure to review them when you notice shifts or trends
Why should you use negative personas
- Stop wasting valuable time and energy on the wrong leads
- Close better quality leads more efficiently
- Wrong buyers cost you money, digging into your profits
- Helps you refine your content strategy to turn leads into the right buyers
- Tightens up marketing efforts and budget spending
- Helps you understand your buyers better and refine lead nurturing campaigns
It is important to understand that although you want to convert as many buyers as possible for your business, wasting time on the wrong leads costs you money. Understanding your negative personas helps you improve your overall content and marketing strategies, invest more in the right buyers, grow your business, and become more profitable.
