Marketing, the Right Way: Using Audience Personas

Kendra is a 32-year-old accountant and mother of two children, ages 6 and 4, who resides in Wheaton, a suburb just outside Chicago. Nutrition and sustainability matter to this millennial mom, but she’s uncertain whether she’s making good food choices for her family. She mostly uses Instagram, Facebook and internet searches for information related to food. She loves living near Chicago so her family can frequent the museums, aquarium, zoo and other family-friendly attractions.

Kendra isn’t a real person. She’s an audience persona.

To be successful in marketing, you have to follow the golden rule. That is, you have to know your audience. And while knowing how to market differently across generational cohorts is a great starting place, getting even more granular can mean the difference between a good marketing plan and a great one. One such tool for getting to those granular insights? The audience persona.

Let’s explore audience personas — what they are and why they’re so important to content marketing.

What is an Audience Persona?

An audience persona is a character who represents your ideal customer. That character has a name, a story, a job title, problems, goals and more. The more the persona is fleshed out, the better you’ll be able to meet his or her needs. You may end up creating several personas.

Where do these attributes come from? From a three-step research process. First, we collect the data, gathering information from surveys, interviews and analytics. Next, we group the data, organizing it into different personas, with each representing an audience segment. Finally, we validate the personas, getting feedback from your customers to ensure accuracy.

Turning data into a persona forces you to organize and analyze. Putting a face on it makes it more tangible. Ultimately, humanizing the data helps you understand your target audience and the best way to connect with them.

Audience Personas Are Your Marketing Allies

With your persona defined, you’re better equipped to create content that will appeal to them. You’ll also have a better idea of where and how that content should be delivered.

Let’s revisit Kendra, the Chicago mom who’s questioning how food is grown and raised and loves all the family-fun activities Chicago has to offer.

If your goal is to educate young parents, like Kendra, about the origins of their food and instill trust in farmers so parents feel empowered about their choices at the grocery store, you might organize a family-friendly farm-to-table exhibit at a local museum. You might partner with key Chicago influencers to spread the word on Instagram or engage with a Mom’s of Chicago Facebook group so that people like Kendra are likely to see it.

In other words, you cater your marketing effort to that audience persona.

Refining Audience Personas with Segmentation and Voice of Customer Research

Both audience segmentation and voice of customer research can help you more fully develop the backstory and needs of an audience persona.

Audience segmentation groups people based on common traits. Example: Illinois Corn was looking to increase Illinois consumer awareness about the benefits of fueling up with corn-based ethanol. A key segment of this audience is young drivers, ages 25-45, around the Chicago area. See how demographic and geographic segmentation informed a campaign targeted toward this audience.

Voice of customer research collects feedback from customers and how they feel about your business, product or service, providing insights into the audience persona allowing us to create a stronger customer experience.

Deconstructing an Audience Persona

A few essentials to the audience persona include:

• Name: Giving your persona a name makes it more relatable and memorable.
• Job Title: This provides insights into their needs and aspirations. This doesn’t need to be a paying job; it could also be the role they identify with like “student” or “parent.”
• Story: A personal story reveals their motivations and struggles.

Establishing how and why the person makes purchase decisions is also useful. Those components might include:

• Decision Criteria: The factors influencing their purchase decisions.
• Buyer Journey: Steps they take when researching and buying.
• Trusted Resources: The sources they rely on for information.
• Priorities: Their top goals and aspirations.
• Communication Preferences: How and where they prefer to receive information.
• Challenges: Their struggles that your product or service can help with.

Visual Audience Persona Mock-up Example

Here’s an example of an audience persona:

• Name: John
• Title: Marketing Manager
• Story: John is a marketing manager at a small business. He aims to generate leads and reach his target audience through innovative campaigns.
• Decision Criteria: Price, quality and customer service influence John’s purchasing choices.
• Buyer Journey: John starts by reading online reviews. Then he visits the company’s website. Finally, he contacts them.
• How Success is Evaluated: Success for John means generating leads and closing sales.
• Trusted Resources: John relies on industry blogs, trade publications and social media for reliable information.
• Priorities: John wants the product or service to be easily accessible and he wants to feel heard as a customer.
• Perceived Barriers: John may doubt the effectiveness of new solutions and whether they are worth the investment. He may find solutions too expensive if he struggles to find cost-effective solutions.
• Communication Preferences: John prefers concise, informative emails and industry-related social media content.
• Challenges: John struggles to find cost-effective ways to boost lead generation.

Putting Audience Personas into Action

As brands consider a refresh or new campaign, it’s easy to get caught up in the product or service you’re putting out into the world. But to really have an impact, it’s important to understand your target audience, your Kendras or Johns of the world. What keeps them up at night, what they value, what informs their decision making — all questions you should be able to answer so you can better meet their needs and create brand equity. An audience persona is a great exercise and continuous reference point to ensure your marketing strategy is on point — from the solutions presented to the language and medium used to reach your target audience.

Contact MorganMyers to learn how you can leverage audience personas and other tools to build a better content strategy.