There’s no arguing with the fact that the Internet has made it possible to reach a wider audience than ever before. But just because you can reach more target prospects doesn’t mean that you should.

Reaching out to too wide of an audience dilutes your advertising message and diminishes its effectiveness by requiring it to be unnecessarily broad. If, for example, you go after all buyers who share certain target demographics (like, say, age, gender and geographic location), there’s a good chance your ads will fall on deaf ears in some cases. After all, one middle-aged housewife in Peoria could have vastly different interests and concerns than another similarly-aged woman in the same area.

If you blast your message out to vast demographic groups at large, you’re wasting time and money by targeting people who aren’t — and never were — true prospects. The secret to better targeting comes from the creation and deployment of good buyer personas.

Buyer personas are fictitious representations of your target buyers, incorporating not just demographic data, but psychographic and behavioral insight as well. On average, using these tools makes websites two to five times more effective by allowing businesses to create catered marketing experiences that speak directly to a user’s needs.

To learn more about buyer personas, as well as what it takes to put them into practice, take a look at the following SIngle Grain infographic