Oct 19, 2023
If you’re new to marketing, you may have heard of the term “buyer persona” or “customer persona”. These personas are usually part of marketing strategies, but not everyone knows what they are, how they’re created, or even why they’re crucial to businesses.
What Are Customer Personas?
First things first, what are customer personas? A customer persona, sometimes referred to as a buyer persona or marketing persona, is a research-based customer profile that reflects your brand’s target customer. They can be based off of your existing customer data, or from research-gathered data. Think of them as the personification of your target market.
Buyer personas paint a picture of who your customers are, where they go, what their lifestyles are, and several things that may affect their shopping behavior and preferences. The main goal of creating these personas is to understand your customer so you can better empathize with their needs and wants.
How Many Customer Personas Should Your Brand Have?
It is common for companies to have multiple customer personas to represent different niche markets. For example, a gender-neutral perfume line can target various genders, and the behaviors of these different target markets can vary drastically. These two represent different markets, but may have overlapping needs and aspirations. Would you talk to someone with a lot of knowledge in one subject matter the same way you talk to someone with no idea about it? Likely not. This is where multiple buyer personas come in. They give you a better picture of who you’re talking to, so you can formulate your marketing messages to be relatable to them.
Why Are Customer Personas Important For Your Business?
Mad Men style marketing, where advertisers dictate what customers should want or need, is not effective in today’s consumer landscape anymore. Now, brands have to know what their clients want, how they talk, what their hobbies are, where they are, and what gets their attention. Customer personas help you do just that.
With so many new social platforms coming out these days, how do you know what your brand should use? Customer personas can help you decide. You can start by identifying what demographic you want to reach. Gen Z’s? Moms? CEO’s? Your customer persona can tell you where to put your content in.
For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, you may want to consider using Tiktok, while Facebook might be more effective for an older audience.
These personas help you understand how your audience thinks, reacts, and responds.
Thus, they can also be helpful when it comes to community engagement. By pinpointing who your customers are, you can play out various scenarios with your community manager or sales team so they know how to respond to different kinds of customers and situations.
The goal of every company is to provide products and services that their customers need. What are their current problems and how can your brand help them? Go back to your personas – what does it say about your current customer? Let’s say one of your customer personas is a working mom. She can be looking into ways to optimize her team’s workflow so she can spend more time with her family. Try out different problems, check the competition, and see if there’s an opportunity there. When you know who your customers are, it’s easier for you to add features or sell products that will be beneficial for them.
Buyer personas are one of the foundations of the best marketing strategies. It’s a way to help brands navigate through this always-on, ever-competitive digital space. People tend to buy from brands they trust and love, and when you tell stories that your audience can relate to, they will want to hear more from your brand. And the more they hear about you, the easier it will be for you to move them from the consideration phase to the conversion phase.
As with everything, customer personas are not set in stone. Changes are constant, and brands should consistently learn to adapt. Listen to your customers. Scan the industry for trends and changes, then apply these observations into your strategies. This way, your brand can remain relevant amidst all the social noise.