What are personas in content marketing

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

If you already work with digital marketing, you must have seen, at some point, the use of the word persona. In another article, we talked a little about it, but let's go into a little more detail here.

In this article, we will explore what a persona is and how to design it to use in your marketing strategy. content marketing.

What are personas

A persona, also known as buyer persona, is nothing more than the representation of your ideal client, in all its details. This representation can and should be done graphically, with demographic and behavioral data, personal objectives, motivations and stories. They are created based on real customer data, market research and insights to help companies better understand who their typical users are.

Personas are primarily used in marketing strategies, product design and service development to ensure that customers' needs, wants and preferences are met effectively. They help companies humanize their target audiences, allowing marketing and development teams to focus on creating relevant, personalized solutions.

This way, you will be able to see how to reach your ideal client, what content to create and how to approach your ideal client. Ultimately, you will be able to determine exactly the ideal plan to win over your client. Therefore, the more information you have about your audience, the more focused and objective your campaigns will be.

But after all, how should we go about creating the persona?

Origin of the term

The term persona, although widely used in marketing, emerged in the technology area. Businessman Alan Cooper, in 1983, was developing project management software. To understand the best way to develop the product, it was necessary to deeply understand the user's needs.

So, Alan had the idea of studying the company's most important customers. Likewise, he thought about interviewing colleagues who had the user profile. In this study, a fictitious user named Kathy emerged.

The first persona experiment was a success, but the term only emerged in 1998, when Alan Cooper published the book “The crazy people are controlling the sanatorium”. Alan uses the differentiation between buyer persona – the future customer who has not yet made the purchase – and user persona – the customer who has already gone through the purchasing experience.

Creating the persona

To create one or more personas, the first step is to write down everything we think we know about them. So, start with basic information, such as gender, age, educational level, position, and include other items. It is important to include other questions, such as this person's goals and challenges, which social media and websites they access, whether they like TV, the means of transport they use (even the type of car, if applicable) and main leisure activities . This way, you will have a general draft.

It is essential, at this point, to align the information with the sales team. After all, they are the people who are most in contact with customers.

The second step is to start researching. You must collect data, both qualitative and quantitative, within a script that you will put together according to the draft that you prepared and refined with sales. Conduct interviews with existing customers, potential customers and others stakeholders to gain deeper insights into your needs, motivations, preferences and behaviors. It is also useful to conduct online and offline surveys to collect quantitative data.

If you have a good contact base, you can create your first notes based on the knowledge you already have about your list. We also talk about lists in another article, and segmenting them will further help you create your persona.

To prepare your survey, you can use some available tools, such as SurveyMonkey or QuizBox (which is free) and launch your campaign to collect data. You can also carry out a survey using the Google Forms, also free.

What to put in the search

A few key questions should be included in your survey. The first one is about why the people on your list contacted or chose your product or service. This way, you will understand the main objective, which will be very important for us to narrow down the information we will be collecting.

Other questions, regarding the purchasing process, will also be essential. Ask how she arrived at your product, which competitors she contacted and where she researched the subject. Include consumption and leisure habits and how often you purchase products and services similar to yours.

Designing your personas

Based on the information you gathered and what you wrote down initially, we will literally design our ideal client. The data to be filled in, together with this visual representation, must be available to everyone in the company involved in the marketing and sales processes. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out an alignment that will be essential to fine-tune the content discourse of your funnel and, subsequently, of your sales team.

The mandatory data are as follows:

• Name; Gender; Age;
• Position/Occupation; Company;
• Level of Studies;
• Main Objectives (what is she looking for?);
• Main Challenges (what problems does she see ahead?);
• How We Can Help Solve Your Problems (do we have a solution?);
• What do you like to do most?

If you want to go further, even better. The more information we get, the better we can define the content to fully reach personas.

Making fine adjustments

Analyze collected data to identify patterns, trends, and common characteristics among respondents. This will help segment your audience into smaller groups that share similar characteristics. Additionally, based on the information collected, create fictitious profiles that represent different segments of your target audience. Each persona must have a name, age, occupation, interests, goals, challenges, purchasing behaviors and other relevant characteristics.

Now that you have designed your persona, the most interesting phase begins: communicating with them. One of the most important features of digital marketing is the ability to review and adjust information. Therefore, pay close attention to your persona’s metrics and responses to your posts. Always be aware of the types of content that are working the most and those that are least popular. Validate the information collected with real customers to ensure it is accurate and adequately represents your target audience. Make adjustments as needed based on the feedback you receive.

Your persona may still need some adjustments until your numbers become really interesting. So don't be afraid to make the necessary adjustments. When creating personas, remember that they must be based on real data and offer meaningful insights to guide your business strategies.

Did you like this content? How about signing up for our newsletter and receiving our updates?