As a company, do you really know your target, do you know who it is really? Reply “yes” to this question is a luxury that is only obtained by the use of the Persona. Indeed, although less used, the latter turns out to be a formidable tool in marketing because it allows to target the public as effectively the public to which you wish to address. By emphasizing the consumer, the Persona gives you the opportunity to create a fully personalized marketing strategy.
What is Persona?
Invented in 1999, Buyer Persona is a concept of digital marketing whose initial goal was to optimize the user experience on a web platform. Over the years, however, it has evolved. Today, the Persona refers to a fictional representation of the ideal client of a company, so it allows to perform a kind of robot portraits of the type customer.
This is a very personalized approach since it aims to focus on the identity, values, beliefs and issues of the customer / prospect. We try to know it, but also and especially to understand it in order to establish a fully adapted strategy. Thus, it is the needs of users who are places in the foreground before the design of the product or service has begun. The Persona has a first name, a history, social characteristics, behaviors, etc.
The main advantages of Persona
Persona is a valuable asset, offering a real understanding of a company’s targets when it wants to develop a new product or service. Once it has definitely defined its customers and prospects thanks to this tool, it can then maximize its value proposition, improve the performance of its marketing and commercial campaigns, and therefore optimize its return on investment. You will understand it to define Personas will strongly influence the success of a product or service.
Composition of persona
Persona combines existing customers and prospects targeted by the company. It brings together several elements:
- Demographic and identity information of a quantitative nature (age, sex, marital status, level of education, place of residence, occupation, social class, income, etc.).
- Behavioral information, which are also the most important. This is data on interest centers, motivations, behaviors, therefore of qualitative nature (purchase habits, information modes, movements, lifestyle, aspirations, etc.).
- Problems that these customers / prospects face daily, and the solutions proposed by the company to remedy it (product or service).
It may be good to predict any objections that the targets could present. Thus, you will already have embedded answers to the marketing plan.
How to build a persona?
Gather information
The first step is the search phase of information by questioning customers and prospects to understand who they are and what they need (quantitative and qualitative data viewed above), but also by exchanging with your employees and your employees . Try to choose a most representative panel possible. For this, you can interview these targets in person, by phone or email. Here, do not hesitate to use the sales and customer service teams because they are the most in direct contact with the targets, and who will be able to share their comments.
The goal here is to recover as much information as possible about respondents to create relevant and accurate personas.
Collect and consolidate the information obtained
Once you have done your background search work, you have to collect all this information and categorize them (profession, shopping habits, age, problematic, etc.) in order to have a good overview. . This step will allow you to identify commonalities and therefore establish typical profiles.
Write a Persona sheet
Start by defining the number of people to create. This varies according to the company’s offer and the size of the targeted public, but the best is to make it between 3 and 5. Then make a plug by Persona, containing its name, a photo to identify it, as well as all the information collected (demographic, behavioral, problematic, needs, motivations, brakes, customer paths, etc.). At this point, it is no longer a question of listing the data obtained, but indeed to create a realistic profile of a person representing a segment of your clientele, with his history, his daily life and his aspirations.
From this, you will then be able to establish an effective and fully personalized digital marketing strategy.
