At Bleeding Edge we’ve been creating Personas for clients for years. They’re a tried-and-true way to gain a better understanding of your customers and target your marketing efforts more effectively. The process of creating them can be illuminating in and of itself but used properly, they can deliver ongoing value. They can be invaluable in creating marketing campaigns and ads, developing content, and can even help with training.
At its’ core, a marketing persona is a detailed profile of a specific customer segment or target market. It should include demographic information such as age, gender, income level, job titles, pain points, and location, as well as information about preferences, values, and motivations.
The persona also includes details about how the customer interacts with the brand, such as which channels they use, what type of content they consume, and how they respond to different marketing messages.
By understanding the needs, values, and motivations of each customer segment, businesses can create campaigns that are more tailored to their target audience. This, in turn, leads to increased engagement, better customer retention, and higher sales.
By creating detailed profiles of their target customers and regularly updating them, businesses can ensure their campaigns are as effective as possible.
So how do you get the most return from your personas? By getting plenty of background information. If possible, a focus group or customer/client interviews can be extremely helpful. You can ask them where they look for information. How likely are they to interact with ads, marketing emails, or social media posts? What matters most to them?
Once you’ve compiled all that information, boil it down to the essentials. Not everyone wants to wade through a dozen pages of information so create condensed, easy-to-read, summaries.
Creating marketing personas is not a one–time process. It should be revisited and updated as customer behavior or preferences change. Industries change, organizations change, and personas should change too. Are there shifts in habits and preferences? Changes to your competitive market? New services, products, or technologies? Updating your profiles regularly can pay dividends.
I heard a fellow marketer say that personas were obsolete. That’s most likely because they let their own die on the vine from neglect. If you’d like to know more, shoot me a line at Bleeding Edge. I’m happy to show you how to develop personas if you don’t have them or update the ones collecting digital spiderwebs!
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