One way to do better marketing is to be crystal clear about the target audience. Marketing personas are helpful for operationalizing that. But that leads us to the question: How do you create a marketing persona? Jenn Mancusi explains on this episode of “Marketing, Demystified.”
Picture a bustling conference, filled with potential customers. An eager salesperson approaches someone to pitch their product. As the pitch begins, the listener’s eyes glaze over. They’re not interested. Time and energy wasted on the wrong prospect.
This scenario plays out daily in marketing departments worldwide. Companies spend countless hours and dollars on campaigns that miss the mark. The reason? A fundamental misunderstanding of their audience.
“I had a conversation where one team was really thinking about a particular persona, and another team was thinking about a totally separate persona, or maybe selling to anyone who was giving revenue,” Jenn said. “That creates a not cohesive environment internally.”
This lack of alignment leads to scattered efforts, wasted resources, and missed opportunities. It’s a common pain point for businesses of all sizes.
The solution? Marketing personas.
These detailed profiles of target audiences can transform marketing efforts. They provide insight into customer motivations, challenges, and decision-making processes.
What is a marketing persona?
A marketing persona goes beyond basic demographics. It’s a comprehensive representation of people who engage with a company, including buyers, users, decision-makers, and influencers.
A good marketing persona includes several key elements. It covers company details like size and industry, as well as individual information such as job title and responsibilities. But it goes even deeper. A strong persona examines behaviors, attitudes, and mindset. It considers challenges and problems faced, and explores information-seeking habits and content preferences.
“This is Mary, She’s 35, she’s the VP of this, and with a bachelor’s degree in XYZ, this is only one piece of their persona,” said Jenn. A truly useful persona captures audience motivations, challenges, and decision-making processes.
Why marketing personas matter
Creating marketing personas isn’t busy work. When done right, they benefit businesses in many ways. They enable more personalized marketing campaigns and inform product development by highlighting needed features. Personas help improve customer experience by providing insight into audience expectations.
Marketing personas give different teams a common language to discuss target audiences more effectively. They also help allocate resources more efficiently, focusing efforts on ideal customers instead of less suitable prospects.
How to create a marketing persona
The process begins with gathering existing customer data. This includes purchase history, product usage patterns, and received feedback.
“Start with what you already know, you’ve got data, you can see their buying patterns, or you can see their usage patterns of your services or of your product,” said Jenn. “You should continue to evolve it and fill it in as you learn new information.”
Next, identify knowledge gaps. Understanding why customers chose the product over competitors or what led them to seek a solution in the first place might be necessary.
Sometimes, additional data is needed to segment the audience. In such cases, quantitative research through surveys or large dataset analysis can be helpful.
Qualitative research is equally important. Conversations with customers and prospects can reveal motivations and pain points that numbers alone can’t show.
With this information, drafting personas can begin. It’s not necessary to have all the answers immediately. Involving sales, account management, and product teams in this process can provide valuable insights and increase buy-in for using the personas later.
Once developed, personas should be shared across the organization. Ensuring everyone understands who these personas are and how to use them helps maintain consistent messaging across all customer touchpoints.
The most crucial step is actually using the personas. They should guide marketing strategy, content creation, product development, and customer service approaches.
“Make sure that you are starting to speak the language of your customer, and answer their questions in your content,” said Jenn.
As more data and insights are gathered, continuous refinement of personas is essential. They should evolve along with business and market changes.
Next steps: Mapping the customer journey
Creating personas is only the beginning. Understanding their actions, thoughts, and feelings at each stage of brand interaction is essential.
“You want to do is then map the journey… thinking about all of the different stages of the buying journey and the customer journey,” said Jenn. “What is that persona doing thinking and feeling at each stage of the journey?”
Journey mapping helps identify opportunities to provide value, address concerns, and guide personas toward decisions. This understanding enables the creation of more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
For instance, if a persona often gets stuck at a particular stage of the buying process, specific content or tools can be created to help them move past that point.
Wrapping up
Creating effective marketing personas is crucial for developing a customer-focused marketing strategy. Understanding audience needs, challenges, and decision-making processes enables better marketing campaigns and improved products and services.
Investing time in creating and using marketing personas sets businesses up for success. It leads to more meaningful customer interactions and more effective marketing, potentially increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.