Adding a Negative Persona to Your Buyer Personas
The wait is over. We offered tantalizing glimpses of our upcoming blog post on “Negative Personas” a couple weeks ago, and now you’re finally going to learn what a negative persona is and how to add it to your list of buyer personas. If you’re not sure what we’re talking about, read here first.
For those of you who have been waiting patiently for this blog to appear, keep on reading.
Adding a negative persona to your buyer personas isn’t hard to do, but it’s oftentimes forgotten. Negative personas are semi-fictional representations of who you don’t want as a customer. It will save you and your team time and money in the long run, as you won’t waste time marketing and selling to this persona. Saving time and money is good, isn’t it? So, take some extra time today to begin fleshing out the negative personas for your company. Here’s how.
Adding a Negative Persona to Your Buyer Personas
1. Identify questions to ask to develop your negative persona.
Pretty easy, right? Just like creating a buyer persona, but focusing on the negatives instead.
2. Determine how you’ll research your negative personas.
Here’s one idea (one which you don’t have to follow, but might work well for your company): interview your current clients. After all, they’re the most realistic representation of your target audience.
3. Compile research and answers to your paraphrased version of questions.
Easy. Take your research and put it all together. What trends do you notice?
4. Use the buyer persona-building best practices to transform your notes into a complete negative persona.
Not sure what those buyer persona-building best practices are? Read here to find out. And if that’s not enough, here’s even more help.
How will you know if you’ve truly found the negative persona or personas for your company? Here’s what to look for:
Characteristics of a Negative Persona
- They may be far too expensive to acquire as a customer
- They will never buy your product or service
- They are too advanced for your product or service
- They are students engaging with your content for research
