How Personas Are Turning More Important For Businesses? [How To Create Yours]

Are you well-versed with your customers? Do you know what actually they need? Where do they love to shop? How much they earn?

The answers to these questions might not relate to your product and services directly, but, these would certainly affect your marketing strategy. Why?

It’s simple; being important characteristics of your customer’s behavior and nature, these will help you know their ‘buying’decision.

Yes, you got it right; it is all about having a well-defined PERSONA which leads you to plan and execute the best marketing strategy in the long run. It helps you target the right groups of prospective consumers, creating a face for your customer, by identifying their needs and wants.

“We take data to tell a predictive story about our users based on past behaviors and attributes…”

Persona- Representing Your Customer Ideally! 

Without any doubt, for every business, it’s vital to identify the potential customers first. Later, you lay out a plan to turn them into buyers.

It is here when personas appear to be a key element for all type of digital marketing initiatives. Being your customer’s description, it informs you about the qualitative and quantitative data. And this would further help you determine the most effective marketing strategy for your business.

Some other benefits you need to check on:

• It helps you connect with your customers
• Attract and maintain the right type of customers
• A user-driven design, focusing on what the user needs
• Save costs on tailoring your marketing campaigns

You might be wondering that if personas are so important, these would be a definite part of every marketing strategy, right? However, things are not the same. Despite being such a useful and critical element, not all businesses are benefiting from them. In a survey, it was found that only 44% companies had them.

What about your business? Does your marketing team have personas?

If not yet, it’s high time; start now!

To initiate with persona profiling, you need to know about the key elements, isn’t it?

So, start with these;

Defining The Demographics:

For this you need to profess a good understanding of the following:

• Location and Climatic condition
• Age and Gender
• Education Level
• Job title

Learning the psychographics and behavioral:

It helps you understand the way your potential customers think. So, ask yourself a few questions like-

• What brands your customers prefer?
• What are they looking for? (Information, products, services, etc.)
• What entices them most?

Determining the enviton:

Understanding the environment they live, or they love to be in, helps you judging what they acquire. You need to find answers to these questions:

• Which language do they speak?
• Which payment mode do they access?
• Which method of transport do they use?
• Which device do they prefer?

Social dynamics:

You cannot overlook the impact and expansion of social media over the past decade. It is mandatory to explore the social dynamic of your persona. And an answer to these questions will assist you in doing so.

• Which social media channel do they prefer?
• What types of media are they attracted to?
• What groups/organizations are they a part of?
• Which brands influence them the most?

Knowing these persona characteristics turns invaluable to your business as you develop your marketing campaigns with help of these.

Thinking how?

For those who are having trouble reaching their customers due to lack of well-defined personas, below is the elementary process to create one.

How to Create Persona for your business?

Take a deep breath! It is not at all a difficult process. Have a sneak peak at the 4-Step Process to get your persona ready.

1. Look for your potential customers and competitors

Start your research online to actually find your REAL personas. Google Analytics can offer you a huge amount of information about your audience. Similarly, you can even find your potential customers on Facebook with Facebook Insights.

Also, don’t miss out to check the competitor’s reviews. Yes, you must look for online reviews of your competitors, as the people who reviewed them can be your potential customers very soon. For this, you can search for an online review of your competitors on Yelp, Facebook, Google+, and so on.

2. Maximize the use of social media

Social media channels not only boost up your business but also give you a clear idea about your target audience but also describe what they prefer searching/ buying. Through different platforms, you can interact with them, solve their concerns, and answer their queries. It would assist you developing social media strategies according to your buyers’ perspective.

3. Conduct surveys with your past customers

You need to survey your past clients and prospects to acquire more information. It is a simple and good approach to find more about optimal customer persona to whom product and service are beneficial. It can include automated surveys in your email marketing plan.

In addition, you can directly interview your potential clients. It gets easier for B2B companies to know what sort of customers they are working with, and what they really need. Most customers search for products or services that are high-value, low-cost suggestions. Understanding these necessities will help companies to promote their products in a better way.

4. Talk to your sales team

Your sales team is there to play a key role in the formation of your customer personas. It is a one-stop solution to get the most valuable data for the current potential customers. They will recognize what kind of people have a tendency to get interested in the products or services being offered, and also those who have no interest at all.

With these steps, you will have sufficient information to have a better understanding of how your audience views and interacts with the world. Now you will be able to reach your goals at a faster rate by creating meaningful online connections which render lucrative business results. Want to know how you can leverage it?

You will understand it better with the example of an e-commerce store looking for new buyers for their latest ‘Gadget’ section.

Using the 4-step process to find persona, it was found;

‘There is a person “Steve”, who is 25 years of age and lives in Manchester, England. He is working and earns a yearly salary of £36,000.00. He has a love for gadgets and shops online frequently. Being highly social, he often visits bars, restaurants, and theatres with his friends. And he likes to stay updated, reading about latest technologies, gadget updates, etc. Making more use of Google, he browse through YouTube to watch gadget related videos too.’

With this little pack of information, it is pretty clear that the ‘Persona (Steve)’ is tech-savvy and there is a need for a marketing plan which fits well for Steve. Hence, the e-commerce store incorporated the following decisions to turn him into a buyer.

• YouTube Marketing: As stated Steve likes to use YouTube; running a video-based Ad campaign would help. Whether it is about the latest products or the product’s features, self-explanatory videos serve the purpose well.
• Expensive Product Range: While Steve earns a handsome amount, he would be more interested in costly products.
• Google Adwords Would Help: Why to count on any other platform when Steve is more interested in Google searches. Google Adwords would be a superior decision as it not only display your ads in front of him but will also somehow help in boosting your SEO efforts.

Likewise, there is a lot you can do for your business with help of persona. As these are fictional representations of actual users, it works ideally when you fully understand your users.

Remember, the more information you have, the better will be your marketing strategy, and greater ROI will be achieved.  And that’s what you are after, right?

Don’t forget to share your success stories with ‘Persona Identification’, and if you have any suggestions, pen down them in the comment section below.