Marketers often speak about talking directly to your customers. Yet how do you really do that? It’s not as if you have a customer sitting right in front of you that you can talk to. Or do you?
One of the best ways to help craft a message is to create what’s called a marketing persona. A marketing persona is a mental model of what your typical customer is like.
Unlike just talking to “your customers,” when you talk to an avatar you’ll be much more able to create a specific message. Your persona, which might be named “John,” be 32 years old, single with a $40,000 income, is much easier to talk to than “your market.”
So how do you create and use a marketing persona?
*Identify All Your Sub-Markets
Some markets only have one primary market. In that case, just use one persona. For example, if you promote a weight loss product for women between the ages of 30 and 40, then that’s exactly what your persona will be.
On the other hand, some products or brands target a variety of sub-markets. For example, let’s say you’re managing the marketing campaign for a hotel. How do you write your copy and target your advertising?
You’d start by identifying all your sub-markets. You have traveling business executives, people on vacations and those who are attending conferences in large groups.
Though you might have other kinds of customers, let us imagine for a moment that these three groups make up the majority of your customer. In this case, you’d create three different marketing personas that encapsulated the needs, desires and motivations of each of the three markets..
*Give Them Flesh and Bones
Each persona needs to be a real person in your head that you can talk to, not just a made up model. They need to have a name, a specific age, an income level, a family status, an occupation and any other relevant details you can think of.
For example, you might name your business executive “Mandy.” She’s an executive at Google who flies around the country scouting locations for new Google servers. She earns $120,000 a year, divorced, has two kids and is 37 years old.
Using Your Avatars
Once you have your persona set up, the next time you are writing copy or designing a marketing campaign, you can just bring up Mandy or any other persona and be sure that your marketing message resonates with that persona.
Then see if there is any overlap. Would it resonate with John? Or with Mary on vacation with her whole family?
If you’re crafting a message just for executives, you might just use Mandy. However, if you are crafting a message designed to have broad appeal, you need to make sure that both the vacation crowd, executives and conference attendees will appreciate.
Share your personas with your co-workers, boss, partners and peers. Use these personas as a tool throughout the office to better fine-tune your marketing messages to make sure you are communicating directly with your intended audience and not missing the mark.
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