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Applied Marketing Strategies

Feature Guide to Personas

On this page, you’ll learn about personas and how they’re used to represent target markets.

2 Target Markets / Page 2.12 Feature: Guide to Personas On this page: 5 of 5 attempted (100%) | 5 of 5 correct (100%)

Earlier, you may have struggled a bit when you had to decide which product benefits to highlight, based on the target market information in the Demographics vs. Psychographics illustration. That’s because the way the information collected about a target market is conveyed is just as important as the information itself. Marketers develop personas to convey information about target markets using images or illustrations and text. A persona is a “portrait” of a typical example of an actual person who is a part of the target market.

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

Read the following article about personas and how to develop them, and answer the question below each section.

Medium The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Marketing Personas Do you know who your customer really is? By Jennifer Clinehens June 11, 2019

NOTIFICATIONS

What is a persona in marketing?

Correct. A persona in marketing is a depiction of a person who is representative of a target

market.

Last change saved 1 minute ago.

a celebrity who represents a company brand

a portrait of a typical member of a target market

a picture of the person the customer wants to be

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Personas are often met with opposition because they’re a lot of work to assemble, and once assembled they are living, evolving things and must be maintained.

Like people, buyer personas change over time with the market, the times, the ebbs and flows of products and services.

They absolutely require work, but they are entirely worth it.”

—MarketingProfs.com

Do You Know Who Your Customer Is?

Personas are invaluable in crafting marketing and sales communications, [creating] customer journey maps, and understanding how to prioritize your budget.

They help you understand who your customer is, what they care about, and how to talk to them. Even better, they make your marketing more effective, and your sales cycles shorter.

What’s a Persona?

A persona is a semi-fictional representation of a group of your customers, boiled down into one representative character.

Personas bring your customers to life through both demographic and psychographic details.

Based on research and data from your existing customers, a persona is a mental shortcut that represents an important segment of your buyers.

Customer focus during persona development is crucial. You’ll need to listen to what the data says about their lives, beliefs, and actions.

Avoid cherry-picking to support pre-existing assumptions about your customer.

Don’t let your own bias blind you from the truth about who your customers are.

Key Elements of a Marketing Persona

When developing a persona, it can be tempting to include every detail under the sun. However, there are a few fundamentals all personas should include:

• Photo: A photo that represents your persona is a key visual tool. It can be tempting to grab the first stock photo you find that’s a general match for your core customer, but that’s not ideal.

A better representation is a real-life picture from first-person research. It’s more relatable, and it’ll help you step out of the echo chamber that too many businesses find themselves in.

• Name: It’s a simple as “Jill” or “The Haverford Family.” Naming your persona is a small detail that will bring them to life. It’ll also make it easier to reference your customers when discussing their journey.

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• Demographics: Factual information about your customer, like age, household income, location type, education, and family structure are all essential details.

They help you empathize with your persona’s day-to-day life and struggles.

Your customer isn’t spending all day thinking about their shopping experience with you, so don’t treat them as if they only come to life the moment they step through your doors.

• Psychographics: These are the values, fears, attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria that define who your customer is, beyond the facts.

This might include hobbies, levels of mobile adoption, and computer literacy, where they get their news, other brands they love and where they go to get updates about the world around them. Psychographics help answer the question, “Why do they buy?”

Don’t get caught up in minutiae here. The persona is part real and part fictionalized (even though the fictionalized piece is still based on data from real customers).

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

What Makes a Good Persona?

Marketers sometimes make the mistake of gathering [persona] information that doesn’t really help them deliver more effective content or campaigns.

If your marketing team is debating whether your buyer persona is a man or a woman, or if you are bogged down finding just the right stock image of your persona, then you’re focusing on the wrong things.

Which key element of a marketing persona helps answer the question “Why do they buy?”

Correct. Psychographics—which include the values, fears, attitudes, aspirations, and other

psychological criteria that define the customer beyond the basic facts—help answer the

question “Why do they buy?”

Saved moments ago.

psychographics

polygraphics

demographics

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—Adele Revella, The Buyer Persona Institute

A good marketing persona makes it clear who your customer is, why they buy, and the areas of friction they face when dealing with your brand.

It also gives you insight into how to talk to them in ways and places that are relevant for them.

Great Personas Are Data-Driven

The real danger with developing a persona is that you’re not populating it with data. Instead, you’re relying on your gut to fill in the blanks.

Although marketers are not generally known for empirical thinking, if you don’t take the time to dig through and rely on hard data, you’ll never get to problems at scale.

This is where the “fictionalized” piece of your persona comes in. The problem is, your persona (let’s call her Sally) may start to become an avatar for yourself or someone you know.

So as a point of example, if Sally is a mom who visits Target for her weekly grocery shop, and there are 100 million moms that come into Target to do their weekly grocery shop, there’s going to be some different need states that drive them in*.

It could be that 60% of them are “value shoppers,” driven in because Target has everyday low prices.

20% of them could be “status shoppers” who go to Target because it’s perceived as “classier” than Walmart.

The remaining 20% could be “health-driven shoppers” who go to Target looking for the latest health brands and organic produce.

In that case, the Sally persona should take on the attributes of a “value shopper,” because she makes up the majority of the “Moms” segment.

*Fictional use case and numbers.

Where Do You Find the Data to Create Your Persona?

• Involve the broader team: A critical mistake in creating personas is limiting key team members to marketing.

Make sure to include sales, analysts, finance, IT operations, and even front-line and support staff in your research. Anyone who interacts with your customer or their data is a key resource.

• Social media, product reviews, and call center logs: This is where your customers give you honest opinions about your brand.

If there’s something you’re failing on or common roadblocks, they’ll become obvious through customer support channels.

• Marketing research: Existing research is invaluable when designing your persona. But it’s not the only source for data. You’re better off combining several data and research sources to avoid cherry-picking or confirmation bias.

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If you notice something in qualitative research, see if it’s supported at scale.

If it’s a one-off comment from a focus group participant that’s not found in the data, it may not be applicable to your final persona.

• Online customer journeys: Analysis tools like Google Analytics and Adobe are great starting places if one of your key channels is online.

This isn’t always the case, as some industries may have digital touchpoints that aren’t often used by customers in their “most likely” journey.

But, depending on how robust your data is, you’ll find this is a key resource for other brands and sites your persona frequents.

• Customer interviews, focus groups, and surveys: Who knows your customers better than they know themselves?

First-person research is a critical data source. In particular, interviews can help you test your hypotheses about your persona’s goals, values, needs, and pain points.

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

3 Common Mistakes When Creating Marketing Personas

Too often, [Personas] are nothing more than an attractive way to display obvious or demographic data.

Defining markets based on demographics—data such as a person’s age, income, marital status, and education—is the legacy of 60 years of selling to the mass market.

—Adele Revella

As with any big research project, there’s a myriad of ways Personas can fall down. But there are a few common mistakes I [see] over and over:

Why is social media an important source of data to use in creating a persona?

Correct. Customers are likely to express their opinions about a company brand candidly on

social media.

Saved moments ago.

It provides detailed answers to personalized questions.

It provides honest opinions about the company brand.

It provides lots of information on all demographic groups.

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1. Being obvious and purely demographic. Go beyond the facts here. By bringing in unexpected insights and fleshing out your persona (without getting too detailed), [you] will help bring them to life.

2. Focusing on your ideal customer and not your real customer. Don’t get caught up in who you think your ideal customer should be. When brands start to reject their core customer, it’s often the start of a slippery trip downhill.

Unless there is a broad, organization-wide reorientation of the business happening, don’t let your ego be bruised by a core persona that may be value-focused, older, or otherwise “uncool.” Not every brand can or should be hip, Millennial-obsessed, Instagram-driven companies.

3. Relying on your gut and not allowing the data to tell a story. I could write for hours about how marketing has become an industry that relies on “experts” far too much and data, education, and research far too little....

10 Key Questions to Answer When Developing a Marketing Persona

1. Is your core customer male, female, or an even mix of both? If even, why did you choose a man or woman as your target (and does it matter)? 2. Is your persona single, married, or cohabitating? 3. Do they have kids now? If so, how many and what ages? If not, are they planning on having kids soon? 4. How old are they? 5. What’s their income level? 6. How much expendable income do they have to buy your product? Do they have to make trade-offs to be able to afford it? 7. What are their five favorite sites, social networks, and brands? 8. If they could describe your customer experience in three words, what would those words be? 9. What kind of environment do they live in? Are they living with roommates, renting, or own their home?

10. What responsibilities and recurring costs do they have? Pets, a car, a mortgage, going out every Saturday night with friends, pedicures, etc.?

When Your Persona Is Complete, Remember to Refresh It

Customer personas represent, by necessity, a snapshot in time and will evolve.

You’ll need to revisit this exercise from time to time.

Given the proliferation of touchpoints, changes in the economy and your business, a yearly gut check of your personas is needed.

From Jennifer Clinehens, “The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Marketing Personas,” Medium, June 11, 2019. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

Which of the following is a common mistake that is made when developing marketing personas?

Avoiding preexisting assumptions about your core customers.

Relying on your gut instincts about your target market.

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What Does a Persona Look Like?

As you’ve learned, a persona is a “portrait” of a typical example of an actual person who is a part of the target market. The following personal examples from My Internet Scout show how target market research can be visualized into personas.

Look at the example personas below, which clearly differentiate consumers based on their characteristics. Then answer the question that follows.

Correct. When creating marketing personas, real data is far more important than gut instincts.

This is because personas are fictionalized and if you stray from the data, your persona may

start to reflect you or someone you know rather than the target market.

Saved moments ago.

Focusing on your real core customer, not your ideal customer.

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Graphic displaying three personas.

The first persona shows a Black man and says, “Mark, 22. Demographics: Rents a 2-bedroom apartment in uptown Charlotte, NC with old teammates from lacrosse. Recently single and using dating apps. An only child and rescued a puppy 4 months ago. Currently an intern for a large sports management company and a bar tender at a high-end cocktail bar on the weekends. Graduated with 3.8 in Health Sciences from UNCW. Owes $28,000 in private loans. Behavioral Identifiers: Hobbies include eating out, lifting weights, playing club lacrosse, drinking draft beer, tailgating for UNC, and watching live music. Wants fast shipping. Values a low price. Prefers online marketing, light colors, and simple websites. Owns an Android and shops on mobile with referrals from social media such as Instagram and Facebook. Personal goals to be out of debt by 2024, to be engaged in 4 years, and to work in a university sports medicine department. Prefers chat systems for customer service and support. Values quick responses and 24-hour availability. Shops online between 7pm-3am. Buys during pay periods at the end of the month and often uses promo codes. Studied abroad in Chile. Can speak Spanish and some Italian. Travels on a budget and prefers hostels to hotels. Very fit and active but has a bad diet due to eating on a budget and drinking often. Seeks out health information daily.”

The second persona shows a White man and says, “Justin, 31. Demographics: Rents a 1-bedroom apartment in uptown Atlanta with his partner. Saving to buy a home next year. Recently engaged to his boyfriend of 5 years with plans to marry in NYC in the winter. Works 40 hours a week in a 5-star hotel as a superintendent with a net income of $120,000. Graduated from a community college with honors and held office in 3 on-campus clubs. Behavioral Identifiers: Hobbies include vegan cooking, yoga, monthly massages, playing the drums, volunteering, drinking cocktails and watching local plays. Wants free shipping on large orders. Values quality and privacy. Extremely brand loyal. Prefers email marketing. Owns an iPhone and tablet. Shops on this tablet with referrals from email marketing and promotions. Personal goals to become a general manager within 4 years and to purchase a suburban home after his wedding and honeymoon. Prefers to call for customer service and support. Values follow up summary emails and easy to read directions. Shops online between 9am-3pm and makes multiple returns. Uses PayPal at checkout. Travels in the USA twice a year to visit family in Maine and California. Prefers long road trips and holiday travel. Cooks very healthy and with local products. Has great self-care and is very active.”

The third persona shows a White woman and says, “Maggie, 52. Demographics: Owns a 4-bedroom home in coastal NC and 2 high-end cars. Lives in a suburban gated neighborhood. Happily married for 12 years with 2 sons and a household income of above $220,000. Human Resource Director of a small media company for 5 years with a $88,000 salary. Well educated with an HR degree from a state university. Graduated without debt. Behavioral Identifiers: Hobbies include reading, playing tennis, networking at the country club, being involved in youth groups and visiting the beach. Wants a simple product. Values quantity and brand image. Prefers print marketing and bold graphics. Owns an iPhone but makes purchases online with a desktop Mac computer. Needs a simple check out system. Personal goals to retire by age 65, to own a vacation home on the Spanish Riviera and for her sons to attend an ivy league university. Strong need for customer service and support. Values face-to-face communication and rewards systems. Shops in department stores after 5pm. Buys in bulk on sale items. Referred by a previous client. Well-traveled in Europe. Prefers traveling in off-peak times in chain hotels and loves pre- planned travel like cruises. In very good health but very busy and often stressed. Visits group exercise programs.”

View larger image

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Image courtesy of MyInternetScout

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

close

Which one of these personas is most likely to purchase products from retail stores?

Correct. Maggie regularly shops in department stores and buys in bulk.

Saved moments ago.

Justin

Mark

Maggie

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