First of all, your brand is grateful for the interest in this topic (you’ll understand it later).
Imagine a person creating a brand new content of a new product for a company. This person will have access to the product features, what price should the company set, what type of platforms make media, what kind of media they create, and many other demands.
But how should that person communicate it?
By taking the first step to ensure a successful campaign (whatever the goal is): knowing the company persona(s).
So, what’s a persona?
A persona is the closest to what makes your ideal customer or target audience. It’s created to help businesses and brands to better understand and empathize with their users or customers.
This is important for optimizing results by communicating the right content to the right target.
Otherwise, your tropical surfboards company will make content for New Yorkers in the winter.
Can you get the relevance of it?
Building your Persona
Creating a persona for your brand demands research with past clients or prospective new clients, as well as market analysis and interviews with existing clients.
We’re talking about collecting relevant data and information, such as demographics: age, gender, and income. Personality features like interests, ambitions, behavior, and perhaps relationships with brands, will also be needed.
You can set barriers which that persona has, what your brand or business can help to overcome that barriers and even what their goals are.
Writing them down, by making a beautiful card with that amazing info, can help you gain a better overview.
Here comes a template for you – MyMktD – Persona.pdf
Seriously, make a card. It helps you and your team.
Once you have this information aligned, create a context for it.
Example:
“Bob, a 42-year-old resident of San Francisco, California, works as a Sports Event Manager. He is a family-oriented individual with a deep appreciation for being in touch with sports. His passion lies in collecting NBA accessories, and his hobbies include traveling with his nieces and nephews, playing basketball on outdoor courts, and spending quality time with his loved ones.”
Introducing Uncle Bob, the real deal, and a solid 10.
But this isn’t everything. Not so fast my friend!
An important detail
Personas should also encompass the problems people face and their interests. But, why’s that?
Will Smith and Jeff Bezos are both American men born in the 60’s, both known worldwide and both wealthy individuals. However, they have completely different interests.
That’s why we can’t only focus on demographics 😉
Defining Variations
Besides having a good definition of a persona – and this is one of the keys where many marketers and professionals fail -, you’ll also need to consider defining variations.
Have you ever worn Nike shoes or accessories?. If’s not, let’s consider another brand.
Guess what? Uncle Bob wears that too!
You think that Nike puts you and uncle Bob as the same ideal customer?
Definitely not (unless you’re uncle Bob’s basketball teammate, who happens to enjoy NBA caps and loves traveling to LA).
This being said, how many people, with the most differences, including cultural or territorial contrasts, did you also see wearing that brand? A lot of people, right?
Having a persona is not only important, but necessary. Having variations of personas is something that you, as a professional worried about how your content will impact the audience, should consider doing.
I’m not telling you to write down 152 personas, with every feature that your client has. I’m just saying to consider making one or two variations (even more depending on your business).
After all, on every content or communication you do, you should think about the differences of all people you impact through your media.
Concluding
As you embark on your marketing adventure, just keep in mind that behind each persona, there’s a flesh-and-blood human and maybe even a secret obsession with NBA caps.
So, approach your marketing with some good empathy, and you’ll be weaving connections, besides only performance (Damn! I’m going to patent that phrase right now).
I want to give a huge shoutout to all of you wonderful folks for being part of this reading and diving into the world of our audience.
Let’s keep cooking up content and campaigns that click with our personas and bring joy and value to our brands.
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