Skyrocket your business to a whole another level with these tips.
When we talk about personas, we are bringing up fictional characters that will represent your ideal customer. These characters are built on top of demographics and behavioral data and they provide a deep and specific understanding of what we call Target Audience.
The main goal is to create these "profiles" to understand the key characteristics of your customers, so that you can develop strategies for your brand that aligns with your audience and its demands. In today's scenario, personas are one of the main tools that professional brands are using to plan their strategies.
Let us show you how a persona profile looks like:
John Doe, a 30 year old single man, is a project manager in San Diego, California. Committed to work and self-care, he values sustainability and transparency in brands. Since he maintains a skincare routine, he prefers online shopping for his premium products while also seeking innovation and personalized solutions.
Personas are basically characters with pain points that needs something to solve them. They're like us, living our normal lives, needing something to solve "X" problem. The X will be the something your brand solves, one of the main reasons why your brand exists.
Now, this example is quite simplified, just to showcase what it looks like. Ideally, you should develop a persona considering a multitude of aspects, ensuring your brand communicates effectively with them, allowing a strategic approach to the development of your products (or services), for example.
If you're creating or recreating your brand, the use of personas becomes crucial to truly develop a brand that connects with your audience's needs.
ARE PERSONAS THE SAME THING AS MY "TARGET AUDIENCE"?
Both are crucial for the success of your business, but they aren't the same thing. A Target Audience research will focus on a broader audience, sharing the same characteristics and demographics that align with your brand, while a Persona research will focus on narrowing down and deleloping specific characteristics for each Persona, aligning with your brand's pain points.
WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF PERSONAS?
There are multiple variations of personas, each one being appropriate for each kind of business out there. Let's take a look on the types of personas and discover what is the perfect fit for you!
BUYER PERSONA
This is the most common type of persona. It's a semi-fictional look of your ideal consumer, representing the behavior, demands, challenges and objectives of who is going to buy from you.
Whether to understand preferences regarding payment methods or to identify how your solutions can solve this customer's problems, understanding its buying behavior is crucial to plan an efficient strategy and achieve great results.
AUDIENCE PERSONA
While the Buyer Persona focuses on specific buyer characteristics, the Audience Persona covers a broader segment of the audience, considering different profiles and interests. This tool will help you understand the nuances and diversities present in your audience, allowing you to create more targeted and strategic approaches.
With it, you can create messages and campaings to different subgroups within your customer range.
We have a perfect example, you can take a look at the brand we developed for KPV Pro wich is sold both B2B and B2C audiences. They needed a specific and strategic Audience Persona development to reach and sell to both customers!
BRAND PERSONA
A Brand Persona is all about your brand's personality. This includes defining your brand's voice, communication style, values and how you position yourself in the market. The idea is to create and emotional connection between your brand and your audience. making everything more personal and memorable to stand out in a crowded market, making sure the app´roach is aligned with the Brand Personality.
Want to find out how to create a Brand Persona? We have a Freebie to help you out on this!
DO I REALLY NEED TO CREATE A PERSONA?
If it's not clear yet, then let's make it clear: Yes of course!
Developing a Persona allows your business to run in a safer, secure way. Letting this run "just because I know it", also known as micromanaging (when someone gets super involved in every tiny detail of what others are doing, instead of letting them work on their own) can take over your day in a blink of an eye.
So, let's see some great advantages of having a Persona built for your brand:
SPECIFIC TARGETING
Having Personas allows for a detalied segmentation, going away from the basic "male from Michigan who likes burgers" kinda data. Understanding what people who will buy your product values, their behaviours and specific challenges enables for a more specific and targeted strategies
ANTECIPATION
Understanding your personas allows you to read the future!
.... ok ok, not like that! It's a matter of anticipating demands, more so. It goes beyond simply reacting to existing demands, helping your brand anticipate customer's desires and providing solutions even before they are explicit. Caution, though, since creating demands without principles can lead to wasted opportunities (and money!)
BETTER CONVERSIONS
When you understand perfectly how your Personas work, you can go through your data easily, refine it and better meet the expectations of your customers. You basically increase the conversion rate, making people buy more from you, by talking better with their needs. The secret sauce is to know how to speak more about them, not more about you.
LOYAL CUSTOMERS
Want people coming back to your brand to buy from you? Keeping your brand up to date to changes in customers preferences and behaviours encourages loyalty over time, so don't think that creating a persona now will always and forever count as a "job done"! Remember to keep your eyes open to new customer behaviours so that you can update your Persona study.
TOP QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASK
Here we've gathered some of the most important questions you should ask yourself to start developing your Personas!
Demographics: What's their name? How old are they? What is their gender? Where do they live?
Professional: Where do they work? What is their job position?
Behavioral: How does they typically spend their free time? What are their hobbies? Interests?
Challenges and Objections: What are the main challenges they faces? What are some common frictions they can have with your brand?
Goals and Aspirations: What are their goals, achievements?
Buying Behavior: How do they buy from you? Online or in store? How much time do they usually spend researching before making a decision?
Values and Priorities: What are their values? What do they take in consideration first: price, quality, sustainability?
AND REMEMBER, AVOID STEREOTYPES
When creating personas, it's important to recognize the individuality of each one. Stereotypes are oversimplifications that make us lose the important nuances that make each person unique. To truly understand their needs, desires, and behaviors, it's necessary to go beyond stereotype labels and consider individual characteristics!
DON'T WANT TO WORK ALONE?
If you find yourself overwhelmed or in need of any help, just contact us so we can help you develop the brand of your dreams!
