Do you know your customer/clients like the back of your hand? Your expertise is priceless. Translating that knowledgebase to 'Personas' will allow you to share that information with a broader team including potential investors, collaborators and many more. In this blog we'll look at what exactly is a 'Persona' and how to start crafting your customer/client personas to better hone your marketing.
Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash
What is a Persona?
A 'Persona' in marketing is a fictional character that represents a particular segment or category of customer/client. It's best to model this figure off of real time data but use a fictional name and details to avoid privacy issues. A well crafted persona or set of personas will make a difference in your marketing when you can write or advertise directly to 'one' individual or group. A persona is often a graphic image made using a photograph and key demographic details displayed in a simple, dynamic way.
How to Craft a Persona
There are tools at your finger tips to help you. Whether you're using social media insights or Google Analytics or email marketing data your persona should include specific demographic information like age, gender, and relevant hobbies or interests adjacent to your service or product. This will help you to better shape not only your marketing materials but also your service or product as a whole.
For example, in the hypothetical of this blog we'll be creating personas for a company which offers online tutoring services. In this case we'd create 2 personas. In the instance of the tutoring service, each customer is a unique use case. How do you market to each of them? Personas can help!
Tutoring Services Personas:
You can and should build your personas off of real data but get as specific as possible in the hypothetical. In the case of persona you may want to include their income (if you know it), their marriage status, etc. In this example for the tutoring service we've created "Jane Smith" and "G. Jones" characters who are looking for two very different tutoring services which the hypothetical client can help with.
When you have a persona framed out like this you might find communicating to your marketing or sales team (or to yourself if in fact you are both of those departments!) easier. Taking the customer out of the head, or 'your gut', and putting them down on paper makes it easier to decide what might attract or repel them from your strategy.
Making sure that you have a comprehensive marketing strategy that addresses the needs and pain points of multiple customers/clients means that you are setting up a strategy for success. This doesn't mean that you have to offer a custom solution for every customer but more that you are aware of the different reasons individuals would seek out someone in your industry.
Personas can be fun!
Writing personas doesn't have to be a boring exercise. Have fun with it and see how specific you can get for customer case stories and examples. Create graphics like the above and keep them near your desk or on your desktop for easy access. The more clear your persona is in your mind the more likely you are to have a clear voice that customers/clients will respond positively to.
Get In Touch
Want to get started creating customer/client personas? We can help! Write to us at: Liz@litirmarketing.com
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