Marketing Personas – is it worth the effort to create them?
To create a persona, you start with understanding who your customers and prospects are and where they like to hang out. We hear that all the time, but what does that really mean? And how do I do that?
We marketing types love to talk in corporate speak. But what is a persona? Why do I need or want to create one? How would I use one if I created it?
In this article, we will dive into all these questions and show you the importance of personas.
What is a persona?
A persona is a way of visualizing who your ideal customer is so you can communicate well with them.
Why do I need or want to create a persona?
This may be the most fascinating and important question. The answer is found in the principle role of marketing and sales.
The principle role of marketing and sales is to get orders from customers. To do that you have to be able to communicate with customers so they understand why they should buy from you. To communicate well with someone, you need to know them. Groups of likeminded people that have the same characteristics as it relates to your products are personas.
The process of creating and writing down personas is the discipline of working to:
- Know your customers and prospects
- Respecting them enough to put in the time and effort to communicate well
- Building trust so that they feel valued and know your product or service will solve their problem
Without trust, there is no relationship and there cannot be a commitment to completing a transaction
It has been stated many times that the process of acquiring a customer is like dating. Very rarely do you have a successful first date that starts with, “Hi, would you like to marry me and have three kids?” The other person’s natural response is, “No, I don’t even know you!”
Get to know your customers and prospects so you can communicate well with them.
How would I use a persona if I created it?
The answer to this question falls out of the answer to the previous question. Because our jobs as sales and marketing professionals is to grow top-line revenue, we want to close more orders.
Personas make it more efficient and effective to do that because we took the time to get to know our customers, their wants and their needs, and we communicate well with them so they feel good about our offer and trust we are the right company to buy from.
You will use personas every time you communicate with your customers and prospects. Emails, sales literature, Facebook ads, website pages, are all examples of places you use a persona to find the best way to communicate with that person.
Business is done between people, so by definition, it is personal. Personal relationships require that you know each other.
Personas for internal customers?
Do you use personas for your internal customers? If not, why not?
Every marketing and sales team needs to convince internal customers to do something. Sales wants engineering to add a new feature to their products. Engineering and senior management have limited resources. Without knowing the personas of engineering and management the likelihood of sales getting the new feature added is greatly reduced.
How do I create a persona?
Usually, people start with demographics like age, gender, geographic location, income, and more.
But the best starting place is to look at what problem your product or service solves. Is there more than one problem we can solve? Group the different problems into their own category, or persona. Then break down the different demographics into groups and personas.
For example, we are selling a BBQ smoker, what are the different personas I could come up with?
- The problem we solve – we smoke food
- For who? – people who want smoked food
This seems obvious but you’d be surprised how often companies get this wrong by overcomplicating it.
But that is a broad definition and we need to be more specific to communicate well with the reader or listener. Can we break this down further?
- Commercial vs residential
- Large smoker vs small smoker
- Male vs female
- Younger or older
- Geographic location
- Type of smoking (wood chips, charcoal, propane)
- Types of food to be smoked (meats, vegetables)
- What do they do for a living?
- How much time might they have?
- Do they like BBQ or only smoked foods
- BBQ might include using rubs and sauces with smoking
Using this example and the different ideas we can up with one example persona might be:
- Commercial smoker for restaurants and caterers
- Needs large smoking capacity
- Job is a manager or chef
- Decision maker for commercial equipment
- A higher percentage will be male
- Uses wood chips to smoke
- Smokes only meats
It is best if it is based on real customers. Look into the data you have on your existing customers. Can you get any additional insights? Does the data change any part of the personas you drafted?
With these examples, it is easier to see how important personas are and how you can best use them to grow your business.
At INO Solutions we clarify your messaging so you will grow faster. We use personas to know what the right messaging for each type of customer or prospect you have and to help determine the best ways to communicate with them.