Marketing personas are the foundation of any marketing strategy and they are critical to driving anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention. For example, your content marketing or product development or sales follow-up!
Marketing personas are a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data.
Oxford College of Marketing
Watch this video to learn how to identify your marketing personas, where to reach them and what messages appeal to their needs.
So, how do you create marketing personas?
1. Gather the information you need
There are several methods you can use. For example:
- Explore your database to better understand your customers’ behaviour. Check for things like their buying routine, their engagement with your content, their location, age, job role, industry, etc.
- Ask your sales team! They will surely have some feedback to share on the leads they interact with. For example, what are your potential customers’ needs? What problem are they looking to solve? How much are they willing to pay?
- Run a survey or a series of interviews and ask for feedback directly from your customers. For instance, these are all excellent questions to help you frame your personas:
- How does our product/service help you achieve your objectives? Or…
- What is the main benefit you are getting? Or..
- What triggered you to buy our product/service
2. Draft your marketing personas
With all this info at hand, you are ready to start drafting your marketing personas. How?
- Give your personas a name.
- Write a brief description of who they are, where they live, what job they do and what they are passionate about.
- Focus on their pain points. What’s their challenge? What need are they trying to satisfy? What would they benefit from?
- Identify their buying trigger: What’s their greatest frustration?
- Outline their buying process. When in need, how do they search for a solution? What elements do they take into account when comparing different products/services?
- Identify their choice factor. What made them choose your products/services over your competitors?
3. Present your marketing personas
Lastly, present your marketing personas to your company. Share the information you used to create them and explain the various teams can use them moving forward!
Hope you’ve enjoyed the read and watching our video! If you’d like to expand on the theme, you may also be interested in the following posts:
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