What are marketing personas?

The first step to marketing a product is understanding the customer base you’re marketing to. Is your average consumer a single, middle-aged black woman or a young, white couple with children? 

Advertisers seek to understand these differences, so they’ll know which marketing tactics to employ. Female customers sometimes gravitate toward different messaging than male customers, and older audiences may prefer different ads to younger ones. The way ads resonate with people is sometimes rooted in various aspects of their identities.

When strategizing marketing campaigns, a team will often come up with one or more personas. A persona is a fictionalized representation of a particular sector of your brand’s audience that helps companies visualize who they’re marketing to. 

When creating a persona, marketers toe the line between character and caricature. The best personas feel genuinely human, whereas the least effective ones are flat. We came up with a few tips to strengthen personas so they can steer your brand in the right direction.

1. Talk to your customers

Authenticity is arguably the most crucial element of creating a strong persona. Authenticity isn’t easy to fake, so it’s best to form these personas based on actual individuals. Chatting with your target audience is one of the most effective ways to do this, as it will provide a clearer picture of the lives, demographics, and personalities of the people who enjoy your product. Talking with customers can occur face-to-face but can also be accomplished via online customer service. 

If your brand has social media accounts, you or a manager should check these comment sections frequently. Customers will often share their praise, complaints, and other opinions here. Responding promptly will not only help them feel heard; it will also give you a better idea of what the members of your target audience are like. You can view their profile for pertinent information like gender, familial status, and age range. 

If your brand has brick-and-mortar locations, you can strike up conversations with customers and gain more valuable information. When interacting with a customer, think about who they are and how they speak. These enlightening conversations can help you to create more accurate personas later on.

2. Avoid unnecessary information

Though a detailed persona can be beneficial, it’s important not to get lost in irrelevant information. Personas should be thorough, but they don’t need to be bogged down with unhelpful tidbits. 

When making personas, try thinking of overarching themes related to your company. Remember to focus on what matters to your brand instead of just imagining an elaborate character. If your company is a grocery store chain, personas should be shaped around food preferences and budgeting. 

Things like customer mode of transportation, however, probably aren’t necessary to include. Once you’ve determined a few relevant themes, ask related questions to help form a persona. To continue the grocery store example, questions like these might help you shape a valuable persona:

• How many times per week does this person grocery shop?
• How many people are they shopping for?
• How much do they make per year?
• What do they value in a grocery store?
• How old are they?

Questions like these help marketers get down to the nitty-gritty, so the personas they make are genuinely helpful. Crafting a good persona is less about extensive detail and more about ensuring that the details you have are relevant and concise.

3. Don't lump all customers together

For most brands, creating only one persona just isn’t going to cut it. That’s because, rather than servicing one specific kind of person, the average company has many. It’s important to carve out distinct personas to represent your different customer segments. Maybe your brand is popular amongst teenage boys, but middle-aged moms flock to another one of your products. These are two very different groups that require separate personas. 

When strategizing for marketing purposes, make sure you create different personas for different groups of people. This will help avoid the pitfall of using one blanket technique to appeal to a diverse audience.

How do I use my personas?

Once you’ve finalized your customer personas, use them to determine which marketing efforts will be most effective. Understanding one’s customers can inform content strategy and tell business owners what products or services their audience may enjoy. 

If you own a frozen dinner company that you know is popular amongst older, single males, you may create a persona and name him Paul. Paul is a single white male who lives by himself. He lives in the Southern United States and has a college degree. 

Paul doesn’t represent any one particular customer but rather an amalgamation of many. By thinking about Paul, what he values, and the choices he makes, you can create messaging based on this portion of your audience. If you know that people like Paul value convenience and generally go for quick, easy options, you can produce ads that emphasize these characteristics of your brand. 

Having this brand persona as a reference point can also help you decide what your brand voice should sound like. Customers like Paul might be put off by elegant brands that talk down to their audience, whereas a wholesome, down-to-earth brand voice could elicit a positive response.

What brand personas really demonstrate are the vast differences between target audiences.

What works for Paul and other older white men might not work for an audience of teenage boys. To understand this audience, marketers might create a persona named Jason. Jason is a seventeen-year-old black male who enjoys reading, playing soccer, and hanging out with his friends.

While doing market research, you may find that this audience sector is attracted to eye-catching packaging and memorable taste. Unlike Paul, Jason isn’t as concerned with low prices or convenience. When trying to attract audience members like Jason, ads should focus more on qualities that matter to him and the other teenage boys he represents.

Acknowledging these differences between demographics is important when marketing. Staying aware of them will keep your company’s messaging authentic, sensitive, and effective. 

Understanding customers is the first step to winning them over, and creating marketing personas is one way to help you accomplish this.