If you intend to develop a successful Digital Marketing Strategy, you need to deal with the needs and events of your target audience and your Personas.
Creating Personas is an in-depth way of identifying your target audience. For almost twenty years, Personas have been used in conjunction with the user experience and more recently, in marketing as well.
The advantage of a Persona is that you have an individual in mind, for whom you, conceive, design and develop a service. Thus, your final product becomes beneficial and worth buying.
Isn’t it sufficient to just define your target audience?
Usually target audiences are differentiated according to demographical criteria. For example, a campaign from a perfume manufacturer can be aimed at women between thirty and forty years, who earn well, have an urban lifestyle and love doing sports in their leisure time. In general, you create target group definitions such as this one, with the help of market analysis.
The Persona definition projects the above-mentioned characteristics onto a fictitious character, who receives a name, a face and is in a particular situation with certain challenges, emotions and needs. Your Persona becomes to a tool for marketers, which is much more precise than the traditional target audience. A study of Google reveals that marketers who rely only on demographical criteria and don’t consider Personas in their Mobile Marketing Strategy, only reach 30% of their potential clients.
Also, when it comes to creating your marketing content, having integrated Personas in your strategy is essential. Without Personas, copywriters can only guess what the needs of their target audience is. Marketers, who consciously look at the emotions, intents and challenges of their target audience can tailor the content accordingly to their needs and consequently increase the success rate and at the same time increase the return on investment.
How do I create a pertinent Persona?
A good Persona needs to be realistic and has to come alive in the reader’s mind when he is going through the description. Don’t create too many Personas, three to four is enough. The Personas are designed to better understand your various target audiences and the more you have, the more difficult it gets. Even big web shops with a broad range, usually work with not more than four Personas.
We recommend establishing an extensive questionnaire in order to create a relevant and successful Persona profile:
Personal background:
- Demographical characteristics
What are the demographical characteristics of your Persona? You need to define age, gender, civil status, residence, revenue, interests and characteristics that are relevant to your target audience.
- Educational background
What is the education of your Persona? Are they specialised in a particular field?
- Professional career
What does the career path of your Persona look like? Where in the professional world do they stay?
Questions about the company (Particularly relevant for B2B Marketing)
- Sector
In which sector is your Persona working? What are the sectors your Persona is familiar with?
- Company’s size
How many employees work in the company of your Persona? Is the respective company a key player in the market? What is the turnover and profit of the company?
Function
- What is the function of your Persona?
- Who is the line manager of the Persona?
To whom does the Persona report?
- What are the objectives of the Persona?
How is the performance of your Persona measured? How is success manifested in this position?
- What is a typical day?
Describe the daily routine of your Persona – before, during and after work.
- What are the special skills your Persona needs in order to do the job?
Challenges
- What are the most important challenges?
What are the problems your Persona faces? What is the impact of all these challenges on the emotions of your Persona?
Responsibilities:
- What are the responsibilities of your Persona?
This includes not only tangible goals, but also the Persona’s responsibilities.
Information behaviour
- How your Persona is obtaining information?
Online and with the help of Social Media? Is it through friends or colleagues? Or by reading books and listening to public speeches?
- Social environment
Is your Persona active on Social Media? Is he attending events? How about memberships, is he a member in a club? And who are the friends of your Persona?
Shopping habits
- Communication with the providers
Does your Persona prefer a face-to-face communication with the provider? Or does he prefer calling the respective provider or maybe an online contact is preferred?
- Is your Persona doing research work on the Internet and comparing various offers?
- How do you think the last purchase process went for your Persona?
These questions will allow you to gain an in-depth picture of your Persona and help you define your target audience. If you apply this tool, you will find the right marketing content for your campaigns and Social Media channels, because in today’s digital society you can only reach your target audience if your content is perfectly tailored to the needs of your target audience.
Eminence, your local digital marketing agency, can help you to conduct a detailed and meaningful audit and establish the right Personas for your specific target audience enabling you to successfully conquer the market with your brand.