What types of data should you mine to gather information for your buying personas? The list goes well beyond the usual prescription to conduct one-on-one interviews. If you take the time to collect different types of data (see the table), you gain the added insight you need to serve your customers.
| Data Type | Examples | Suggested Places to Find It |
|---|---|---|
| Demographic/ socioeconomic | Age, gender, education, income, standing in the community | Customer surveys, government data, Quantcast, comScore, Nielsen, Experian Simmons |
| Psychographic | Habits, values, hobbies | One-on-one interviews, social media platforms, customer surveys, buying patterns, forums, blog comments, Google analytics |
| Trend information | Popular culture | TrendSpottr, Trend Hunter, BuzzSumo, Magazines, Online news sites, TV shows, Google trends, Customer surveys |
| Questions/pain points | Questions customers are asking/jargon they are using | Quora, Yahoo Answers, Stack Exchange, Wiki answers, blog comments, Internal customer support, Google Analytics, customer events, conferences, sales team and other internal departments |
| Social media content | Twitter, Facebook, others | Social Mention, Google Alerts, TweetReach, IceRocket |
| Internal customer records | Buying patterns, product usage | Internal company reports, CRM systems |
| Search | Keywords | Google Analytics, Google Autocomplete, Ubersuggest |
| Gated content | Lead generators | Top-ten lists, tool lists, e-books, PDFs |
