Article

Marie-Pier Godere
Marie-Pier Godere 14 July 2017
Categories Content, Email & eCRM

Marketing Personas: Are You Doing it Right?

Defining who your audience is the basis of a good marketing strategy. How can you send a personalized communication to your target audience, well identify their needs and interests, and figure out the best way to reach them, if you don’t know who they are? Creating personas can help you in this matter.

What is a persona?

Personas are fictional representations of your target segments. You assign to these fictional persons specific attributes that represent them. A company can have as many personas as it has target groups.

How to create a persona?

Research – Persona creation usually starts with a massive research of information about the audience. You must try to collect as much information as possible from all primary and secondary data sources, such as forms, surveys, discussion groups, market analyses, and more.

Analysis – Then, the information is consolidated into groups that have common characteristics. Personas are usually defined using gender, age, income, marital status, scholarship, occupation, place of residence, etc. Depending on your industry sector, you may add many other attributes.  Then, try to define the specific problem of each persona, what information they needs, how they seek information, when they want it and their role in the decision making process.

Models – To make your personas more real, you can give them a name, add a picture, and create a complete profile of all their shared characteristics. Making personas known across the company will encourage each department to adapt their actions and speeches to your targets. Priorize your personas; some are more important to your success than others. And, to quickly generate benefits, be sure to focus your marketing efforts on your main personas, those that are most profitable to you.

Optimization – Customers’ interests and habits change quickly. You should therefore review your personas every 3 to 6 months, and validate your criteria regularly to ensure that they still apply. In addition, after a specific campaign, it is interesting to immediately review your personas, to validate if you got the expected reaction.

5 tricks to improve your personas

  • Don’t wait to know everything about your audience to define your personas. You need to know just enough to be able to create and send proper content.
  • Do not target only the “ideal average” audience; also focus on individual aspects that could be used, for a higher level of personalization and revenue potential.
  • Make a list of what you would like to know about your personas and how you could get the information through your marketing actions, rather than stick to what you already have.
  • See your marketing as an opportunity to gather information, not just results. Analyze how your audience reacts (or not) to your content to learn more about their needs and preferences.
  • Design your editorial line according to your personas and keep it flexible so it can be adapted to a particular context.
Please login or register to add a comment.

Contribute Now!

Loving our articles? Do you have an insightful post that you want to shout about? Well, you've come to the right place! We are always looking for fresh Doughnuts to be a part of our community.

Popular Articles

See all
How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

A company website is crucial for any business's digital marketing strategy. To keep up with the changing trends and customer buying behaviors, it's important to review and make necessary changes regularly...

Digital Doughnut Contributor
Digital Doughnut Contributor 25 March 2024
Read more
The Impact of New Technology on Marketing

The Impact of New Technology on Marketing

Technology has impacted every part of our lives. From household chores to business disciplines and etiquette, there's a gadget or app for it. Marketing has changed dramatically over the years, but what is the...

Alex Lysak
Alex Lysak 3 April 2024
Read more
The World Is Shrinking: 6 Degrees of Separation Is Now 2!

The World Is Shrinking: 6 Degrees of Separation Is Now 2!

Six degrees of separation is not just a party game, it's a reality. Everyone is the world is interconnected, and thanks to social media, that connectedness gets tighter and richer each day. See the research...

Scott Christley
Scott Christley 9 August 2017
Read more
10 Factors that Influence Customer Buying Behaviour Online

10 Factors that Influence Customer Buying Behaviour Online

Now is an era where customers take the center stags influencing business strategies across industries. No business can afford to overlook factors that could either break the customer experience or even pose a risk of...

Edward Roesch
Edward Roesch 4 June 2018
Read more
What Marketing Content Do Different Age Groups like to Consume?

What Marketing Content Do Different Age Groups like to Consume?

Today marketers have a wide choice of different content types to create; from video to blogs, from memes to whitepapers. But which types of content are most suitable for different age groups?

Lisa Curry
Lisa Curry 21 October 2016
Read more