How Creating Buyer Personas For Your Jewelry Store Can Help Attract New Customers

Over the last five years into 2019, the demand in the Jewelry Store Industry has certainly remained strong, largely as a result of increased consumer spending. However, due to the low barriers to entry, the competition has majorly increased — both from online and physical retailers (IBISWorld). These developments make it more important than ever for jewelers to set themselves apart from the competition.

A key factor for jewelers to achieve this is to understand their target audience.

Why is this important? When choosing a product or service, people naturally gravitate toward businesses they know and trust. And, the best way to build trust is to show genuine understanding and concern for the person; in this case, that's the customer themselves.  

This may seem easy to do, but it is not as simple as it sounds. 

One of the techniques jewelry marketing teams (such as GemFind) use in order to help their clients achieve an accurate representation of their target audience is to create buyer personas. A buyer persona is a research based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas describe the ideal customers, what their days are like, the challenges they face and how they make decisions.

The ROI: Knowing the target audience can help build a better marketing plan. Marketing campaigns and offers will target the right people while also correctly addressing their wants and needs. Additionally, a sales team will have a better understanding of how and what to assist customers with, creating a customer service experience the competition can't match.

How do Jewelers Create Buyer Personas?

To create buyer personas, jewelers will need to do thorough research and analysis, examining their customers. This may seem like a lot of upfront work, but it will be well worth it in the end.

The easiest way to conduct the necessary research is to create a survey asking a series of questions from your customers. It’s important to ensure that when you’re writing the questions you are making them specific to your jewelry store. The questions will be related to understanding their needs,  and why they buy from your store.

Get to know what they appreciate about the store's jewelry selection. This includes engagement rings, wedding bands, necklaces, etc. Add questions about what styles of jewelry they like, what materials they enjoy wearing, what styles of designs they like — and dislike.

Next, seek to understand what messaging they enjoy from you. Pull product descriptions and ask if they enjoy the way you describe your jewelry. Ask if they like the jewelry marketing promotion  or if they need to receive information in a different format.

Ask customers about their overall experience. Questions should include inquiring about customer service, the knowledge of products from the staff, availability of products, the price of the products and so on. You should also ask how you can improve the overall customer experience. 

Ultimately, jewelers need to be as specific as possible and focus on the motives of their customers, in addition to their actions.

The survey should be distributed to customers, both past and present. To encourage participation, offer a piece of helpful content, such as an eBook, to incentivize them filling out a survey. Encourage feedback, be diligent, and work hard to get as much information as possible as you can — without being overbearing or pushy.

Looking for more tips to help get more customers? Download our 2019 Jewelry Store Marketing Guide now!

Building Your Personas

Once you collected all your responses it’s time to start analyzing the data. There will be a considerable amount of information for you to go through, so the easiest way to begin organizing your feedback is by grouping similar answers. These similarities help describe your different personas.

Once the data is grouped, begin building out the individual personas. When doing so, jewelers should be as detailed as possible. A few important details should include:

• Give your persona a name (and even a photo to go along with the data)
• Include important demographic information (age, salary, relationship status, etc)
• Use real quotes from the surveys you conducted to further illustrate their wants, needs, likes, and dislikes about your jewelry

You can also include a section for how you plan to market to these. For example, if the knowledge of jewelry was of high importance to one one of your personas, make sure to incorporate your expertise in the messaging of your promotions.

Build the persona out into a one-page document you can reference as often as needed. Don’t be afraid to be specific; this information is meant to help you market your jewelry better and ensure you’re offering jewelry that your buyers will love!

Remember: If you want something, it always helps to clearly define what you’re going after.

If you still have questions about creating buyer personas, contact GemFind Digital Solutions today and get in touch with one of our digital marketing experts!

Contact GemFind to get started. 800-373-4373