Don't worry, creating a persona isn't rocket science! However, it does require care, attention, and criteria so that the defined digital marketing plan has positive and satisfactory results. So, let's learn how to create a persona and why it's important for a strategy.
What are the differences between target audience and persona?
Many people still confuse target audience and persona. However, they are different things.
To be more precise, we can say that the persona is the polished, refined and objective target audience.
Understand the difference.
Target audience
The target audience encompasses, in a more general way, who your potential consumers are. It takes into account factors such as geographic delimitation, socioeconomic analysis, the brand's operating segment and competition.
Persona
The persona is an in-depth study. With it, you can see with a magnifying glass who your customers are; how they act, what they think and what they are looking for. Basically, it is giving a face and a profile to the target audience.
How to create a persona?
To know how to create a persona, you need to understand what market research is. This is the basis for knowing every detail of the person who consumes a brand, product or service.
There are several types of market research: quantitative, qualitative and mixed. Currently, few companies specialized in the subject use the old questionnaire made with paper, pen and clipboard on the streets.
To facilitate the collection of responses and speed up the analysis process, many surveys are carried out electronically, using forms and programs that generate metrics with the data obtained.
To conduct successful market research and create a persona, you need to follow a few steps. Let’s look at what they are.
Create a questionnaire
It is not possible to conduct good market research and create a persona using a generic questionnaire. It is necessary for the consumer to enter the brand's universe with each uk business fax list question, saying why they consume a certain product or service, telling us about their relationship with it and, of course, talking a little about themselves, their tastes and their needs.
The survey needs to go beyond basic questions, such as age, marital status and profession. It needs to include questions that show people's personality, preferences and desires. Of course, the questionnaire cannot be too long or tiring, but it needs to address the right points so that you can get a consistent result.
Some interesting questions are:
gender;
age;
marital status;
number of children;
region where you live;
level of education;
profession;
income;
hobbies;
how you use technology;
main means of communication used;
dreams and goals;
main personal and professional challenges;
main pain points and how your company can help solve them.
Select your ideal clients
You need to define who the consumer is that you want to approach. Give preference to people who actually follow your social media profiles, consume your brand and bring new consumers to get to know it.
You can't use generic people who are randomly passing by on the street as a basis; you need to search your customer portfolio, contact lists and purchase history to find out who represents the ideal consumer of the company's products and services.
Fortunately, any company that has digital records — be it a website, an online store, a blog or social media profiles — can track these consumers. These are the ones that research should be based on.
Approach customers
The approach tends to be an underestimated step in the persona creation process. However, it is this step that will determine the success or failure of the project, as it will encourage customer participation. Therefore, it is essential to take some precautions.
Preferably, use a personal profile or contact to approach the person, as this creates closeness. In a private message, try to introduce yourself, explain your objective and propose a conversation, whether in person or online.
If possible, offer some benefit to the person you contacted, such as discount coupons or exclusive gifts. Also, don't forget to make yourself available to answer questions and, most importantly, thank them in advance for their collaboration.
Analyze the data
After completing the survey, all the information obtained must be transformed into graphs. In this sense, surveys conducted through questionnaires are faster and cheaper, as they require less time for analysis.
It is necessary to take stock of everything that was answered. This way, it is possible to identify the data that is most repeated and then create a persona without making mistakes or running the risk of being generalist.
It may seem confusing and laborious, but many surveys are carried out via electronic forms or use specific software for this type of work, which shows the screening metrics in just a few minutes.
But this is, of course, for quantitative surveys; qualitative and mixed surveys require some manual work anyway.
Document the persona
With all the data in hand, it's time to refine everything that was collected, extract information from the statistics and create one or more personas that can represent the universe of your target audience.
In other words, your client will have a name, age, marital status, children (or not), location, education, profession and hobbies. The persona emerges with tangible characteristics, personality, tastes, desires and doubts.
See examples of personas:
Mariana , 35 years old, married with a young son. She works as a business administrator and leads a team of 20 people. She likes to keep up to date with the latest news in Brazil and the world, but she doesn't have much time to go into more detail; therefore, she keeps up to date using her cell phone and social media. Her daily routine is busy, so she reserves weekends and holidays to spend time with her son, walking in parks or going to the movies. She wants to consume products and services that help her organize her daily life and are practical;
João , 23 years old, single and recently graduated in Physical Education. He already works in the field, as a teacher at a gym near his home. He wants to deepen and improve his field and is already thinking about taking a postgraduate course or taking courses that will make him stand out in the market. He is vain, attentive to new technologies, loves going out with friends and posting on social media. He likes to invest his money in reputable products that are high quality and renowned.
All of this makes the mission of working with Inbound Marketing much easier, as the professionals who will execute your strategy will have a good idea of the people on whom they should focus their efforts.
You will now be able to see more accurately who your end consumer is and how they think, achieving the desired results in a shorter path and without communication failures.
Did you see how creating a persona makes your work much easier? This way, you can get closer to the end consumer and offer them tailored content that will inform and educate. It will also allow them to become a lead at the time they deem most appropriate, because they understand that a certain product or service fully represents them or satisfies their needs.
