, are generic profiles that represent your brand’s target demographics. It’s not enough to say you’re sending messages to women aged 20 to 30. Your customer persona may be Amber, a 25-year-old nurse who is interested in hiking and eco-friendly initiatives, or Joel, a 40-year-old man who owns a small accounting business that is having trouble reaching customers. These descriptors should represent the majority of the people you’re targeting in a particular customer segment.
Defining a customer persona for every one of your target audiences helps you better understand who you’re speaking to in your photos, videos and other marketing efforts, as well as what is most important to say to get them to listen.
To generate customer personas, brands must narrow down their audiences and identify key demographics and psychographics their customers share. Then, brands can turn to the consumers themselves to learn more about their interests, personalities, ambitions, pain points and more. All of these things should contribute to a purchase motivation. By analyzing patterns in this data, your brand can build your customer personas.
It’s likely that you’ll have multiple marketing personas. The wider your customer pool, the more you should create. You’ll want to decide which personas are your “primary” audiences, as well as your secondary audiences and even anti-personas, or people your brand is not targeting.
Why are customer personas important?
Many brands don’t want to take the time to create customer personas for their audiences. However, these companies lose out on the immense value personas have to offer. When used correctly, customer personas can help you properly shape key marketing messages and brand collateral for the best possible success.
Your customers are not “groups” of people—they are individuals with individual thoughts, feelings and interests. However, many of those people will share some of these things. Tapping into those shared interests or pain points will help your message land for the widest group possible.
Similarly, using customer personas can help you make your marketing efforts more personal. Customers want to know their favorite brands understand them. What better way to convey that you do than by learning about them and personalizing your messages to address what they tell you?
Ultimately, the major benefit that well-shaped customer personas provide to your brand is they let you see the customer’s reaction to your branding through their eyes, so you can tailor your messaging accordingly.
Using customer personas in marketing
Brands should use their customer personas in every aspect of their marketing efforts to gauge consumer reaction and interest.
When considering a video campaign or other marketing tactic, consider how your personas might react to it. Is your
voice appropriate? Does your video address their pain points? Does it touch on the interests and ambitions they have as consumers? Will it ultimately drive them to shop with your brand? You may need to segment your marketing messages according to customer persona, so that the right message is being sent to the right person every time.
Another way to use customer personas is to find customers who match them and use them in your marketing efforts. Showcase them in case studies or testimonials to show audiences how people like them are benefiting from your brand. Without first identifying these personas, you would not be able to identify the perfect customer to highlight.
Building well-thought-out customer personas is a crucial part of a brand’s early marketing efforts. If your company needs help bolstering their branding,
say hello
to the Spin Creative team to learn more.
Spin Creative is a video production company and creative agency helping marketers create winning video and creative strategies that engage, inspire and activate targeted audiences. Spin is headquartered in Seattle with offices in San Francisco and London, serving brands around the globe.
