In the marketing world, there are numerous ways to find and target customers. Some ways of targeting customers are more broad, and others more narrow in scope. Marketers create and use Personas for that purpose, and modify them to their desired scope. This is what makes Personas such a great tool for such a wide variety of industries.
Ready to learn more about marketing personas?
Imagine a product of your choice, and read on!
1. What is a persona anyway?
In the context of marketing, a persona is sort of like a profile for your ideal customer. Check out the picture above for a great example of what a marketing persona looks like. Thinking back to the product you imagined earlier, what does the typical customer look like for that specific product? This is where you can be as narrow, or as broad as you would like.
Your persona may include things like:
- Demographics
- Shopping habits or Personality
- Location
- Job or Role
- Interest (or lack of)
- Values
- Wants, Needs, Desires
- Worries, Fears, Frustrations
- …and more!
2. Why should I use one?
Creating personas early on in the product development life cycle can help the company determine their marketing strategy more easily and be able to more accurately shape it. Even if you’re already established as a company, it’s never too late to create a persona. Coming up with one later in the business’s life is still often beneficial! Most importantly, a persona is a great way to determine who your buyers are, what situation they are facing, and their goals to be achieved. With answers to those consumer-aspects, more informed business decisions can be made and successes realized.
3. Okay, but what do I actually do?
Again, there are many ways to go about this. The following is an example of what and how I would personally organize the process.
Interview
Customer data collected via various forms – feedback buttons, reports, web polls, live chat services, etc.
Download
Collected data downloaded into Excel, and organized into spreadsheets.
Pivot
Using the pivot table function within Excel, preferences of customers who purchased my product can be analyzed.
Profit
By understanding why these consumers purchased my product, I can better market my products to others. In a perfect world, this increases sales, revenue, and profit.
Get out there and personify!
Resources:
Larry Kim – The New Email Marketing
Ashley Kennedy – Personas
Hallie Exall – Integrating Email marketing with event promotion
Henry France – Personas for Marketing In 2019
Examples from ImpactBnd.com
