What marketing personas are, what they are for and how to create them

Marketing personas give us the chance to look deeper into our customers' needs. Can we imagine their problems and desires better than by picturing them visually? Thanks to them we can divide customers into groups and tailor products and services to them.

Marketing personas

A persona is a fictional customer profile through which we look into a person in depth and identify with them. We gain a view of their interests, behaviour and goals.

We divide personas into several types:

• first persona - our main typical buyer, the one we want to engage
• negative persona - a person who is in the target group but will probably not fulfil our goals. It may be a professional looking for a higher range of the products we offer, or a person for whom our product prices are high and who therefore will not buy.

• buyer persona - people we want to convert into our customers
• audience persona - people who help us promote content, that is everyone who likes and shares our content and brand

What the difference is between a persona and a target group

Marketing personas are very specific and concrete, which is their greatest advantage. They give us an exact, detailed picture of a person from our target group.

Let us look at the difference between them this way. If you give copywriters or content specialists only the general information that company XY's target group is men aged 25 to 35, that information will probably not tell them much when creating content. To be able to meet our customers' needs effectively, we need as precise a picture of them as possible. It helps us speak to a given customer better and tailor content to them. After all, we will talk one way to a 35-year-old man and another way to a 25-year-old university graduate. And that is despite the fact that in certain cases we could include them in the same target group.

All right, but how many such personas should we create? Create about 4 or 5. If you have customers abroad, create separate personas for them too. Every customer has different buying habits and traditions connected with their country's culture. Personas for the Slovak market therefore need not match those for the Czech or Hungarian market. Remember that personas should above all represent our ideal customer, the one we want to reach.

What a persona is for

On the basis of customers' behaviour in the past or the present we can predict how their buying behaviour will develop in the future. Thanks to a persona we do not forget how to proceed within the company so as to solve their problems as well as possible.
We can use personas in several marketing activities. We use them most in creating content, websites, email marketing, social media posts and choosing channels for promoting content. It is easier, after all, to write copy for specific people we can picture. Our output will then speak directly to them, using the style of communication they normally use. But we do not stop at creating the content itself. We work with personas when putting together an offer too, so that it stays interesting for customers, and finally when creating advertising campaigns, which thanks to them are more personalised and better performing.

How to go about creating a persona

Hmmm, it makes sense, does it not? Once you have grasped the point of marketing personas, you can throw yourself into creating them. How? First think through everything you want to find out about your customer. Ask, or obtain answers to, these questions.

The first step towards successfully creating the most accurate profiles is to find out as much information about the customer as possible. In Google Analytics you can get information about where visitors came from, what they did on the site, what they searched for and how long they stayed. Visit every discussion forum, blog and social network where your customers are. If you work in the B2B segment you will also use LinkedIn. Market research, questionnaires, purchase data or customer feedback will help you.

Personal contact always plays a big part, so do not forget it. Talk to your employees who are in direct contact with customers. Or ask the opinion of acquaintances who fall into the target group. That way you will gain a perfect overview of your customers.

A persona profile should contain answers at least to these questions:

• name, age, gender, marital status
• geographic location
• education, occupation, salary
• leisure activities, values, opinions
• personal and professional goals, skills
• buying behaviour (which sites they follow online, what time they tend to be online, what information they search for, inspiration, triggers to act)
• problems and desires you can solve, and so on

The form in which you write this information down is up to you. For better visualisation, add illustrative images. You can create personas with your team in the company or have them worked up by a marketing agency. But for them genuinely to help you, you cannot make things up in them and add things you have not verified. We always start from quantitative and qualitative data about the target group and current and past customers.

Get to know your customers to the marrow and prepare them an offer they cannot refuse, along with content they will want to see. Do you need help with it? We are the experts! :) Should you need it, get in touch and together we will put together your ideal marketing personas.