The first step in any great marketing plan is simple: Know your audience.
It’s also arguably the hardest step—you don’t want to cut any potential customers out, but you can’t realistically target every single person on the planet.
Marketing personas help you solve that problem. As broad, composite sketches that represent key groups of people, marketing personas create a clear vision of who you want to reach. You’ll be able to craft messages that directly resonate with issues they’re facing, and create a brand that’s relatable and relevant.
4 things to consider when creating a marketing persona:
1. What is some basic information about your persona?
First, give your persona a name. This is the initial step in transforming them from a vague idea into an actual person. Other basic info might include age, gender, education, marital status, geographic location, where they work, and how much money they make.
2. What are their goals and values?
Identifying their aspirations helps you figure out what your persona cares about, as well as what’s influencing their decisions and personal choices. Knowing this helps you understand how your business or nonprofit can help them address those needs or achieve their goals.
3. Where do they find information?
Find out the news sources, influencers, blogs, and social media accounts that your persona uses to educate or inform themselves. Refer to these sources to find out how other brands are positioning themselves, and share content from their channels on your own platforms.
4. What interests them or gets them fired up?
What concerns your persona? What opinions do they hold about political or social issues? What hobbies or pastimes do they enjoy? If your persona is passionate about certain issues or topics, use that information to shape how your brand voice communicates.
It’s also helpful to identify who is not your ideal customer.
Knowing who you’re not targeting can help you narrow your focus and create content that resonates with people who will be more interested in what you’re offering.
It’s okay if you need to create more than one marketing persona—maybe you need a separate profile for millennials and Gen X, or your audience is too broad to be covered by one persona. Do the exercise until you’ve covered everyone you’d like to reach.
By understanding who your customers are, you can tailor your brand messages to connect with the issues and needs they care about most.
Want to create marketing personas for your organization?
Book a free 15-minute Discovery Call with TwoTone Creative and we’ll join you on the journey to identifying your target audience.
As our content strategist, Melanie helps craft what you want to say in the way you want to say it. With experience in social media management, feature writing, blog posts, and more, she’s passionate about connecting the dots between small details and big-picture ideas. Whether you need a snappy tagline, a compelling email message, or a social media post that keeps people coming back for more, she enjoys transforming ideas into stories that impact and inspire. She’s in her element when she gets to revitalize tired, old ideas into fresh, new content, and loves tackling writing projects covering any topic.
