Ever wonder why some brands just 'get' you? It's like they're reading your mind, right? Well, there's no magic involved, just the power of knowing your target audience: their needs, wants, motivations, frustrations, jobs to be done, and so on. That's where marketing personas come in, a super handy tool that's like your go-to cheat sheet for everything you need to know about your audience.
In this article, we’ll talk about the advantages of personas, describe the process of building a marketing persona, and discuss how to use a persona in marketing.
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Think of marketing personas as your secret recipe for success. They are like detailed character sketches but for your target audience segments. Personas form a vivid representation of your customers, encompassing their goals, preferences, challenges, motivations, and other relevant information.
To understand the advantages of creating a marketing persona, consider the following points:
A persona in marketing is more than a tool; it's a foundational element of a successful, empathetic marketing strategy that deeply resonates with your audience.
Whether you are going to use a persona in digital marketing, offline marketing, or a combination of both, the persona development process should comprise distinct steps.
Accurate, useful personas are based on research findings and real data, not educated guesses. So, where to look for data? Well, there are plenty of sources, just like the ones below.
Some people on your team directly communicate with customers: salespeople, support agents, social media managers, etc. They will share their perspective on who your customers are, their goals, pain points, and motivations.
Your colleagues will also provide quotes from emails and support logs, recordings of demo sessions, and other valuable information coming directly from the target audience.
Businesses research their customers regularly or from time to time. Or at least conduct user testing sessions when working on a new product version. So check your organization’s digital shelves for poll and survey results, recordings of customer interviews, user testing session videos, and other relevant materials.
Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Adjust… Chances are, you use at least one of these tools or their alternatives to get insights for your business. Why don’t you use it to better understand your customers’ behavior?
Talk to your customers. Real conversations with your clientele are an invaluable source of data you must not overlook to get a complete picture of your target audience and/or typical users, as well as their goals, tasks, pains, and needs.
A marketing persona cannot represent your entire customer base or one individual customer. It should be a representation of a meaningful customer group: customers who have similar goals, characteristics, and/or behaviors.
You can use a segmentation approach that fits your marketing needs best. For example, if you want to use personas in digital marketing activities, like a targeted advertising campaign, demographic segmentation will be a good choice.
Prior to turning customer segments into persona profiles, it’s essential to decide whether you need a persona for each segment or are going to focus on some of them. For example, if some segments are not very profitable and have limited potential, it’ll be wise not to concentrate on them.
Read more about segmentation for personas in the Persona Creation Guide.
Depending on the tool you choose, your persona profile layouts will vary. In this article, we’ll use UXPressia’s Persona Editor to build a marketing persona.
The structure of your persona will also vary depending on its purpose. So, be sure to include all the relevant information in the profile.
When it’s finished, you will have something like this:
As already said, the choice of sections will depend on the persona’s purpose, but you’ll definitely want to include some of these:
Giving your marketing persona a name and adding a human photo will help you drive empathy and make it memorable. When naming your persona, you can follow this formula:
First name + last name (optional) + short name describing the group
Example: Peter, Indie Music Fan
Don’t use the name or photo of a real person you know (e.g., your first teacher or a movie star), as associating the persona with this specific human being won’t do you a good turn. Staged photos won’t work either — they are too artificial to help you develop empathy.
Specify the persona’s personality type to get one more angle to look at your personas and differentiate between them.
These can be age, gender, location, job title, and so on. Anything you need to make the most out of your persona in marketing. For example, you can use this information when launching ads on Instagram.
Context and background information about your marketing persona will help you determine how they would interact with your product or service, who they are, and what brought them to you. Having details about their previous experience with your alternative can be useful as well for your marketing purposes.
Each persona has their own goals, and it’s important to know how they align with yours. For example, our marketing persona, Peter, has two goals:
Things that motivate and frustrate your target audience will help you develop a better marketing strategy. So be sure to include them in your marketing persona profile.
What channels are best for reaching your target audience? What are typical touchpoints to take into account in your marketing strategy? Make your persona a go-to source for this valuable information.
Read also: Differentiating between channels and touchpoints
Who are the people and/or brands that have the most impact on the persona? Considering this data will help you, for instance, come up with a collaboration idea with some brands, potentially bringing a larger number of customers from your target audience segment.
Having a section with customer quotes will allow you to use your audience’s language in marketing campaigns, ensuring that they resonate with the people you target on a deeper level.
These could be the devices your target persona uses, browsers, search engines, questions the persona would ask, and any other information you will need in your marketing activities.
In the end, you will have a full-fledged profile:
AI can aid you in building a marketing persona in many ways:
Crafting a marketing persona is just the start. The real magic happens when you weave this persona into your marketing activities. Here are some ideas on using your persona in marketing efforts:
By integrating your persona into these key marketing activities, you'll be able to craft more targeted, engaging, and effective marketing strategies. Remember, the better you know your persona, the more personalized and successful your marketing efforts will be. Let's turn those insights into action!
Before leaving, download our Persona Creation Guide to build your persona whenever necessary.