Personas

How solid are your marketing personas?

Who is this for? Why are we doing this? Are you sure we’re saying the right thing? Those are just three of the many questions you may ask yourself when working on a marketing project. Finding the answers is much easier when you have robust and relevant marketing personas.

What’s a marketing persona?

A marketing persona represents a group of clients with similar profiles, personal goals and client journeys.

Personas are a powerful way of embodying not only demographics (e.g., “our clients tend to be women in their 30s) but also user needs (e.g., “needs to prioritize risk management in their portfolio”). A persona can be viewed as a composite of attitudes, motivations, pain points and goals.

(Graphic is for illustrative purposes only)

How customer personas add to your marketing strategy

The main benefit of developing personas is that they’ll help you adjust your brand messaging. Well-developed personas are powerful tools that can illuminate how a customer or prospect might interpret your offering. You can focus on marketing your messages and developing products based on those personas.

What to watch out for

Here are some pitfalls to avoid when creating your marketing personas:

  • Making the personas too broad: You want them to address your clients’ specific likes, dislikes, goals, pain points, etc.
  • Lack of research: You can build strong personas by interviewing a cross-section of your clients and prospects. Remember, it’s important to gather qualitative data to layer onto and complement quantitative data and insights.
  • Making assumptions: If you’ve identified a blind spot in your personas, resist the urge to fill it up with something that may or may not be true. For example, if you’re not sure what your persona’s pain points are, don’t invent them, as you might be flavouring your content with incorrect assumptions. Do more research until your personas are truly useful.

The list could go on, but it’s a good start and reveals that building personas takes a bit of work.

Are your personas up to date? This is important. Over the years, your business may grow, expanding into new segments and regions and serving new clients. That’s why your marketing personas should also evolve.

Personas can help you tailor your messaging to optimize your clients’ experience and provide maximum value. As such, they should be essential tools in every marketer’s toolbox.

Need help creating or updating your user personas? Ext. Marketing can help. Contact us today at 1.844.243.1830 or info@ext-marketing.com.