The Ultimate Guide To Creating SaaS Buyer Personas
Software as a service (SaaS) has been revolutionizing the way businesses operate. Especially with the recent pandemic, SaaS solutions have become even more popular as they allow companies to quickly change and adapt their strategies.
However, the SaaS market can be widely diverse. Each SaaS product caters to a specific set of customer needs, making it difficult to create a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy.
That’s why SaaS businesses need to target their marketing strategies toward the specific people who would benefit from their product.
And that’s where SaaS buyer personas come in.
In this article, we will talk about everything you need to know about SaaS buyer personas. We will discuss what they are, why they are important, and how to create a user persona. We will also explore some examples of SaaS buyer persona templates.
By the end of this article, you will at least have an idea of how to create your own customer personas.
So let’s dive right in.
What Are SaaS Buyer Personas?
SaaS buyer personas, or customer personas, are semi-fictional profiles of the ideal customers that SaaS businesses create to target their marketing efforts.
SaaS customer personas often contain information such as job title, income level, and whatever information would tell you about their preferences, pain points, and motivations for buying a SaaS product.
It’s important to note that a buyer persona is different from an ideal customer profile (ICP).
An ICP is a more general idea of your ideal SaaS customer. It includes basic firmographic information about the businesses you’re trying to win as customers.
This information includes their industry, size, location, and more.
SaaS buyer personas are a more detailed version of the ICP as they include demographic and psychographic information about specific people in the business.
Think of it this way: if your ICP is a specific team in the NBA, your B2B buyer persona would include information about the star player, the coach, or the manager of that team.
Why SaaS Buyer Personas Are Important
Creating SaaS buyer personas is one of the most important steps any SaaS business can take. Not just when it comes to marketing its product, but also in other key areas that can make or break your SaaS company’s growth and success.
Let’s discuss more details about the importance of creating your SaaS buyer personas:
They Help You Target Your Marketing Efforts
As we’ve mentioned earlier, SaaS buyer personas help you target the right people with the right message. You can use your customer personas to create content and ads that are tailored to their ideal customers’ wants, needs, and pain points.
This will make sure that your SaaS marketing efforts are more efficient and effective in reaching the right people.
They Help You Create a SaaS Product That People Want
Creating SaaS user personas is also important when it comes to product development. They will give you insight into what features and functions your customers are looking for in a SaaS product.
This way, you can create more tailored solutions that will meet your customer’s needs and wants while saving time and money on unnecessary features.
More specifically, it will help you optimize the user experience of your SaaS product, leading to more satisfied customers and less churn.
They Help You Price Your SaaS Product Right
Your buyer personas will also help you price your product right.
Since they include valuable information about the target audience of your SaaS business, you’ll have a better understanding of how much they are willing to pay for your SaaS solution.
This way, you can make sure that your pricing is competitive and meets the needs of both customers and the company.
What’s more, knowing your user personas will also enable you to tailor subscription plans for them, even if they don’t ask for a customized solution. This is especially true if you have a tiered pricing model.
For example, let’s say you are targeting three specific buyer personas: The Professional, The Supervisor, and The Business Owner. You can create different plans for each user persona, taking into account their needs and budget.
For example, the “Professional” persona may be looking for a basic plan at a low cost while the “Business Owner” persona may need a more comprehensive plan with premium features.
Key Components Of A SaaS Buyer Persona
So what do you need to include in each of your SaaS customer personas?
Below are the key components you should consider when creating a SaaS buyer persona template:
Demographic & Firmographic Information
This includes basic demographic and firmographic information about your target customer.
This information may include the following:
- Job Title
- Sector or Industry
- Company Size
- Location
- Age Group
Each of these components will help you identify which plans or versions of your SaaS platform will be the most appealing to each SaaS buyer persona.
Roles & Responsibilities
It’s also important to include roles and responsibilities in each customer persona. This will help you understand which particular features of your SaaS product would best help them do their job better.
For example, if you have an analytics SaaS solution, a buyer persona who is in charge of data analysis may be looking for features to help them sort and analyze data quickly and efficiently.
Pain Points & Challenges
Another important piece of information you need about each SaaS buyer persona is the pain points and challenges they face. This will help you understand what features or problems your SaaS product should address in order to meet their needs and wants.
For example, if a user persona is dealing with a lot of manual processes, they may be looking for a SaaS solution that can help them streamline and automate those processes.
What They Need
It’s also important to include what SaaS buyer personas need, in light of the pain points they are facing. This will help you understand which features they are looking for and how they prefer to use the SaaS product.
For example, let’s say one of your buyer personas is indeed dealing with a lot of repetitive manual processes. What they need may be to automate those processes and make their jobs easier.
Preferred Content & Communication Channels
Last but not least, your SaaS buyer personas should also include their preferred content and communication channels.
This will help you target them with the right content that they are looking for, in the right marketing channels.
For example, if your SaaS buyer persona is an IT professional who likes to stay up-to-date on industry trends through blog posts and webinars, then you know where to focus your marketing efforts.
How To Create SaaS Buyer Personas
Knowing the key components of a SaaS buyer persona is good and all, but you also need to learn the process of how to create accurate customer personas that can truly help you optimize SaaS product development and marketing activities.
Here’s how you can create your SaaS buyer personas:
1) Know Your Target Audience
Start with a broader view of your target audience by creating and examining your ICP. Make sure you have all the necessary firmographic and demographic information that you want to target.
As we mentioned earlier, this information will help you identify which aspects of your SaaS product would best appeal to them.
2) Identify Individuals That Have Influence Over Buying Decisions
Once you have identified your target personas, the next step is to identify individuals who would have influence over their buying decisions.
I’m not just talking about company decision-makers, such as executives and managers. Employees and other lower-level end-users can also influence SaaS purchasing decisions.
What’s more, the employees can themselves be the buyers. Nowadays, professionals buy SaaS products on their own initiative.
Of course, they only mostly sign up for free plans or basic low-cost subscription plans. But they do their own research and own SaaS product purchases in order to improve their own work performance.
If your SaaS product (or a certain version of it) can be used by individual professionals, you may consider these buyer personas as well.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll talk more about SaaS buyer persona examples further down in this article.
3) Do Your Research
Creating your SaaS buyer personas requires a lot of research and brainstorming with your team. You need to make sure you are not just making assumptions, but that you have facts and evidence to back them up.
Here are some ways you can do some market research about your buyer personas:
Gather Secondary Information
Collecting secondary data can be a good start in understanding SaaS buyer personas better. So look for existing reports, studies, surveys, and other sources of information related to SaaS buyers.
However, there will be times when existing data won’t be enough. Perhaps there isn’t sufficient information to establish detailed buyer personas or the existing ones aren’t up-to-date.
Either way, it’s always a good choice to do your own research to make sure that your SaaS buyer personas are truly accurate and relevant.
And that brings us to our next points of conversation.
Launch Surveys
One of the ways you can gather primary information about your target market and buyer personas is by launching surveys. This method is a good way to collect SaaS buyer persona-related data directly from your users or target audience.
You can use an online survey tool like SurveyMonkey or Pollfish to create a questionnaire that you can send out to potential respondents.
Of course, these questions must help you establish key information about your buyer personas.
Here are some sample questions you may want on your surveys:
- What is your job title?
- What industry do you work in?
- Describe your daily responsibilities at work.
- What are the most pressing challenges you are facing at work?
- What software or online tools do you use to do your job?
- How often do you use these tools on a daily basis?
- What features are most helpful to you?
- What features do you wish these tools had?
- How do you prefer to learn about new software tools?
- Which websites do you browse when you need help with a challenge at work?
- What factors are most important to you when choosing a new software tool?
To make your survey easier to answer, you may enable your respondents to choose from a dropdown list or tick boxes. You could also let them answer by rating them on a scale of 1 to 10. This makes it easier for you to compare the answers given by SaaS buyers with different demographics and backgrounds.
Still, if your question needs a specific answer from each respondent, you may still ask for written answers. Just make sure to keep it to a minimum. Otherwise, respondents may lose interest halfway through the survey.
What’s more, remember that people don’t answer surveys for fun. They will expect something in return. So you will need to provide compensation — and I mean moolah (money).
Hold Focus Groups
Another way to gain SaaS buyer persona-related insights is to hold focus groups. This has the same purpose as surveys — getting information about SaaS buyers, customer preferences, and buying behaviors.
But unlike surveys, focus groups are more interactive, allowing SaaS buyers to explain their thought processes in detail.
When running a focus group, you will need moderators and note-takers to keep the conversation going and track all the important points mentioned.
You will also want people who can help initiate conversations by introducing topics related to SaaS buyer personas or customers’ needs.
Focus groups may be conducted online or offline depending on your budget and preference.
The good thing about online focus groups is that you can reach SaaS buyers from different locations and backgrounds.
On the other hand, in-person focus groups help you understand SaaS buyers better by seeing their body language, analyzing their facial expressions, and hearing the tone of their voice.
What’s more, these in-person conversations are a good way to build rapport and trust with SaaS buyers.
Whichever method you choose to go with, just remember that focus groups should be kept short — around 90 minutes at most. SaaS buyers are mostly busy people and they don’t have all day to discuss their answers to your questions.
What’s more, it’s important to make sure that all of your focus group participants are comfortable in the environment and are free to express their opinions without any judgment.
It will also help if you can create a casual atmosphere during the conversation. This way, your participants will open up more and you can get better insights from them.
And of course, you will also need incentives (in the form of cold hard cash) in order to get SaaS buyers to participate in your focus group.
Conduct Interviews
Finally, you can also gain SaaS buyer persona insights by conducting interviews. Interviews are a great way to learn SaaS buyers’ behavior and preferences in detail as you can ask more targeted questions about their journey.
However, it’s not just potential customers that you can interview.
You can also conduct these interviews with industry experts and analysts that can provide deep insights into SaaS buyer personas and the trends that may affect them.
4) Analyze Your Data
Once you have collected all the SaaS buyer persona-related data, it’s time to analyze them and make sense of it.
You can start by sorting your survey responses according to SaaS buyer firmographics and demographics, such as their job titles, industries, and company sizes.
This will give you a better understanding of what SaaS buyers from different backgrounds think of your SaaS product.
From there, look at the answers given by SaaS buyers regarding their buying behaviors and preferences.
What do they like about SaaS products? Are there any features that are important for them but missing in current SaaS products?
Next, analyze the focus group conversations and interviews you conducted. Did any SaaS buyers discuss similar SaaS-related problems? What solutions did they suggest?
Once you have done all this, you will be able to create SaaS buyer personas with more accuracy. The data and insights you gathered from surveys, focus groups, and interviews should give you a good idea of who your SaaS buyers are and what their needs are.
5) Create Your Buyer Personas
Now that you understand who your potential customer are, it’s time to create your very own SaaS buyer personas.
You need to use the data and insights gathered from surveys, focus groups, and interviews to create user personas that accurately represent SaaS buyers’ needs and preferences.
Start by giving each SaaS buyer persona a unique name — this will make them easier to remember and reference in your SaaS marketing strategy.
Next, include all the essential information about SaaS buyers in each persona, such as their job titles, industries they work in, company sizes they work with, their buying behaviors and preferences toward SaaS products.
6) Give Each Persona A Story
You will also need to give each SaaS buyer persona a story. This will help you to relate with them on an emotional level so that you can create tailored SaaS marketing campaigns that resonate with SaaS buyers better.
The stories should include important details such as SaaS buyers’ goals, challenges, and fears. They should also mention how SaaS products or services can help SaaS buyers overcome their obstacles and achieve their desired outcomes.
Don’t forget to include SaaS buyers’ pain points and needs. What SaaS features are they looking for? How can your SaaS product or service solve their problems?
Lastly, think about how SaaS buyers interact with SaaS products. Is it through a website, an app, or both?
By taking all these factors into consideration when creating SaaS buyer personas, you will be able to develop marketing strategies that target SaaS buyers more effectively.
7) Refine Your Buyer Personas
Creating your SaaS buyer personas is not just a one-time big time thing. You will need to refine them over time as SaaS buyers’ needs and preferences change.
As a SaaS company, it’s important that you stay up-to-date with SaaS trends and customer behavior changes.
If SaaS buyers have shifted their attention to a new feature or an industry, make sure that your user personas reflect these shifts.
Be sure to also review how SaaS products are performing in the market from time to time. This will allow you to modify existing SaaS buyer personas or create new ones for emerging SaaS markets.
By regularly refining your SaaS buyer personas, you can ensure that SaaS buyers are given the best SaaS products and services to meet their needs.
Examples of SaaS Buyer Personas
Now that you know how to create SaaS buyer personas, here are some examples of SaaS buyers and their personas:
Example #1: “Alex”, The Startup Founder
This user persona is a startup founder who needs SaaS products to help them launch and manage their business. They’re looking for cost-effective solutions that can scale as the company grows.
Job Title
- Startup Founder
- CEO
Industry
- Technology
Company Size
- 10 to 30 employees
Roles & Responsibilities
- Leading and managing a startup business
- Building an executive team
- Implementing short-term and long-term plans
- Making the company attractive to investors
Pain Points & Challenges
Alex is struggling to find SaaS products that can help him efficiently manage and grow his startup. He’s also looking for SaaS products that are cost-effective and can scale with the company as it grows.
Desired SaaS Benefits
Alex needs SaaS products that can help him plan, launch, and manage his business more quickly. He’s also looking for SaaS products that integrate well with other services he uses to run his business such as accounting software or customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
Preferred Content
- Blog Posts
- Business Podcasts
- Social Media
- Quora Discussions
Example #2: “Jackie”, The Supervisor
Jackie is a SaaS buyer who is looking for SaaS products to help her manage her team more effectively. She’s interested in SaaS products that can help her track progress, communicate with team members, and delegate tasks efficiently.
Job Title
- Supervisor
- Team Lead
- Manager
Industry
- Any industry (e.g., manufacturing, retail)
Company Size
- Small to medium-sized businesses (50 – 500 employees)
Roles & Responsibilities
- Leading and managing a team of people
- Making sure that teams are working productively and efficiently towards organizational goals
- Generating reports on team progress
Pain Points & Challenges
Jackie is looking for SaaS products that can help her manage her team more effectively. She needs SaaS products that can help her track progress, communicate with team members, and delegate tasks efficiently.
Desired SaaS Benefits
Jackie needs SaaS products that can make it easy for her to keep track of projects and tasks assigned to each team member. She’s also looking for SaaS products that can help her produce visual-rich reports that she can bring to meetings with senior-level management.
Preferred Content
- Blog Posts
- Educational YouTube Videos
- Social Media
Example #3: “Lola”, The Influencer
This user persona is a social media influencer who is looking for SaaS products that can help her reach and engage more people. She’s interested in SaaS products that can help her create content quickly, monitor engagement, track analytics, and find new followers.
Job Title
- Influencer
- Content Creator
- Social Media Marketer
Industry
- Online marketing & Advertising
Company Size
- Individual or freelance (1-2 person team)
Roles & Responsibilities
- Creating online content to promote goods or services for businesses or individuals
- Monitoring engagement and analytics on social media platforms
- Engaging with followers to build relationships
- Collaborating with brands, sponsors, and other influencers
Pain Points & Challenges
Lola is looking for SaaS products that can help her quickly create content, monitor engagement, track analytics, and find new followers. She needs SaaS products that are cost-effective and easy to use.
Desired SaaS Benefits
Lola needs SaaS products that can help her reach more people in a shorter period of time. She’s also looking for SaaS products that can provide insights into how she can better engage with her followers. By understanding her audience better, she’ll be able to create more focused and engaging content.
Preferred Content
- Social Media
- YouTube Videos
Final Thoughts About SaaS Buyer Personas
SaaS buyer personas are important for SaaS companies to understand their target customers. By creating SaaS buyer personas, you can develop better product strategies and sales approaches that will be more successful in the long run.
However, this takes a lot of research and analysis to get it right.
Sometimes, you also need to think outside the box in order to cover all your bases and create buyer personas for all of your potential customers.
We can learn from Lola, our example above, that it’s not just professionals and businesses that SaaS companies should be targeting. Certain types of SaaS providers can also target individuals who are working on their own personal projects.
What’s more, keep in mind that customer personas are not static and should be regularly updated with new data. This can help you stay ahead of the competition and make sure your SaaS products continue to meet the needs of your target customers.
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