What is the Customer Persona?
Defining the ideal customer is an important point to start any marketing strategy, at the end of the day marketing
specialists cannot market their products and services to all customers in the same way, they cannot send the same
messages to all customers, nor they can target all groups and segments of customers with the same ads, which is why
all marketing specialists must focus on that important concept which is customer persona, also known as buyer persona,
marketing persona, or audience persona.
Customer persona, is a group of similar people in a desired audience, they represent a segment of the target audience or group of audience
who have the same shared characteristics, they are fictional users and have the same goals and characteristics of a larger group of users they
represent. Creating customer personas plays an important role in marketing by determining the best methods and channels to reach people using
the right message, offer, and product at the right time and customized for their needs and goals. Customer persona also helps personalising
messages and ads targeting different groups of customers in all different stages of the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion,
and loyalty).
In another way, customer persona is a representation of the individuals’ characteristics, their goals, and pain points (the obstacles that
prevent customers from achieving those goals). Creating customer personas enables marketers to have more feedback about their strategies by
viewing them from the customer's perspective to make sure that all marketing materials like ads, emails, and videos are tailored to the
customer's priorities, needs, and preferences.
Why Customer Personas are so Important?
First, customer personas help you create customized marketing materials and personalized ads for
the people who are most likely to buy your products or services. Usually, businesses create more than one type of
customer to represent and capture all segments of customers they want to target. Each customer persona represents an
individual from one of the segments of the target groups. A target group is a set of people who have similar
interests, goals, or concerns.
Second, customer personas allow marketing specialists, and businesses in return, to view their strategies from the
customer's viewpoint which allows them to understand them better and work on the points they ignored before creating
the customer personas, as a customer persona is a group of similar people that represents a segment of the target
audience, that segmentation is more specific than targeting the broader whole audience. That mentioned, customer
personas allow businesses to create content customized for the needs and characteristics of that group of customers
in the customer persona, to recognize their pain points and provide them with products and services according to
their needs and goals. On the other hand, customer personas are important for effective ad targeting. Using the ads
targeting tools provided by digital advertising platforms (like Google Display Targeting and Google Search Targeting),
marketers make sure that their ads target the desired segment of customers based on their strategies.
By understanding and applying the concept of customer personas, businesses get better equipped to create marketing ads
and materials that truly connect with their audience, setting their brands apart in highly competitive marketplaces.
What to Include in Customer Persona:
There are some question that help create the customer persona, the purpose of those questions is to create an imagination of one customer that works like a representation of the group to which that customer belongs, some of those questions are related to:
- Who: Provide a short description of the fictional person that includes their name, age, location, household, and education. A photo can be included also. These details make it easier to imagine someone who represents an actual customer.
- Goals: Represent the achievements the customer wants to reach. Those goals should be related to each other that affect both the customer’s lifestyle and your products and services.
- Barrier: Identify a pain point that prevents the person from achieving their goals.
- Personality
- Hobbies
- Values
- Lifestyle
How to Research Customers
Creating an accurate customer persona begins with research, and you do not need to guess, you need real data about real customers, including demographics like age, location, household, education, and occupation, but if you do not have that data you can do the research in other ways like analytics tools, customer interviews, surveys, focus groups, and other research methods. You’ll also need data about your customers’ goals and pain points.
Some questions are beneficial in order to gather customer data, like the following questions:
- What is your date of birth?
- What is your age?
- Do you go to college?
- What is your education level?
- What are your hobbies?
- Where do you live?
- Whom do you live with?
- What is your preferred field of business?
- What is your occupation?
- What are your primary activities on a typical workday?
- What do you do during the weekend?
- What challenges do you face?
- What do you value most?
- What are your goals?
The questions you ask should also be tailored specifically to address your company’s products or services.
After you gather and compile all the data, you’ll need to organize it by finding trends and grouping similar answers together. Then, based on the data collected, you can create fictional personas that represent each target group in your target audience.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that customer personas are based on the research and information you have about your actual customers. Accurate customer personas based on research help you better connect with your target audience.
Creating customer personas will help you approach your work from the customer’s point of view. Your marketing messages, your brand voice, and your email and social media campaigns can all benefit from knowing the customer at a deeper level.
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e-commerce, digital-marketingThank you for taking the time to read my insights on customer persona. Please add your thoughts and feedback in the comment below or share the article, and should you have any other ideas to add or discuss, do not hesitate to get in touch please:
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Resources
If you are interested in knowing more about digital marketing dynamics and jargons, you can view the following resources:
