The Power of Buyer Personas

It has never been easier to target a specific audience in skin care, especially for smaller players in the industry. Previously, only big skin care companies had the resources and know-how to map out who their customers are and reach an audience that can grow their business. Today we can apply several algorithms to analyze data from consumers. And the information is at your fingertips. Even a newbie private label seller has the resources now.

However, the data is useless if we don’t interpret it. You have to know your customer. For that reason, we invent a person, or “buyer persona”. This is your ideal prospective customer. Consider their age, income, interests, and most importantly, their pain points. For customers to connect with your skin care product, the messaging needs to be engaging, informative, and specific to your fictitious person.

The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule applies here. Eighty percent of your revenue comes from 20% of your customer base. The remaining 20% is generated from the rest. The obvious decision is to focus your marketing efforts on the 20% responsible for most of your income. This will improve your conversion and lower your advertising costs. It’s a win-win!

Where Do I Start?

There is an abundance of skin care companies out there, trying to figure out what women want. You’ve embarked on the journey of private label skin care, and your product fulfills a need. Who has that need? Can they afford the product? What do they like? Don’t send messages into the void. Create a person you can relate to.

Start with demographics and psychographics. Psychographics is a term used in market research for the classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological factors. Facebook is still one of the fastest growing ad networks and is a great way to start niching down your audience. Use the different filters to hone in on your target audience. Instead of making up definitions, ask questions. These questions will guide you in your messaging. Let’s look at some important identifiers:

• Age: Skin care products especially focus heavily on age ranges. An anti-wrinkle cream will probably be for women over 35. What problem does your product solve?
• Location: Considering the private label model, target the location you can ship to.
• Gender: Skin care products are very specifically manufactured for different genders.
• Interests: On Facebook, you can identify groups with specific interests. Health? Beauty? Fashion? A like on a page just got you a lead.  
• Education level: This will tell you what the tone of your messaging should be.
• Income level: An important one based on the price of your product.
• Relationship status: Relationships change buyer behavior.
• Language: You’ll base this on the location you’re targeting.
• Favorite websites: How do they spend their time online? The content will steer your tone in advertising.
• Buying behavior: How do they buy? Is there a lot of research involved, or are pretty pictures enough? What content drives them to act? This will be a great indicator to see if coupons and samples work for your market.
• Buyer pain points: What is their pain point and how can you solve it?
• Buyer concerns: What questions might they have about your product? How can you incorporate that information in your advertising?

Do some research to understand your buyer persona’s mindset. Are they looking for a skin care product? Which price point are they comfortable with? Keep this in mind when curating your content to align with your customer’s interests and concerns.

Timing

Once you’ve determined your buyer persona, find out when and where to reach them. Keep in mind the different platforms you are using to reach out. The behavior of users on a social media platform will provide insight into where to reach them, when to reach them and how to tweak your approach. A Facebook ad will not look the same as an Instagram ad. Change the tone of your message to align with the platform. Look at what your competitors are doing to reach their audience.

Never Stop Optimizing

What does that mean? Never stop tweaking your buyer persona. The longer you are in business, and the more sales you make, the more data you will receive on your customer base. Analyze this data and update your buyer personas accordingly. Incorporate the future changes of the skin care industry and use your data to stay agile and current.  

Starting out, you’ll mostly base your decisions to target a specific audience on hunches and knowledge of the industry. With more data comes better understanding and analysis. You’ll discover whole new market segments you didn’t even think of and save money by niching down your audience.