Persona examples are one of the smartest ways you can leverage information to guide your marketing. But let’s start at the beginning. What exactly are persona examples?
From Wikipedia: “In marketing and user-centered design, personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way. Marketers may use personas together with market segmentation, where the qualitative personas are constructed to be representative of specific segments. The term persona is used widely in online and technology applications as well as in advertising, where other terms such as pen portraits may also be used.
In other words, personas are made-up examples of customers that are the best targets for your products or services. Personas are also used to inform web design choices and marketing touchpoints. Creating customer personas will help you understand who is visiting your website, how they use your site, and what information they’re interested in.
How to get started creating your buyer persona example
You can cull a wide range of information to help start to form your personas. Start with Google Keyword Tool, Google Trends and Google Insights. Then, tap into your social media monitoring, and demographic and psychographic sources. Are there phrases or terms that tend to cluster together? Are there certain types of questions that are frequently being asked?
Next, find some current and potential customers that you can interview. Using them can give you insights such as attitudes, value and habits. Combine these findings with your web and social media and you’ll start to see a solid picture form.
Arrange all of your findings into categories such as:
- A personal profile
- The buyer’s needs & pain points
- Their research behavior and how you can reach them
- How they like to buy
- Their goals & objectives
- Your brand’s goals for engagement
Finally, write up your persona example. Think of it as a biography or resume of the person most likely to be your best customer. Give him/her a name and then fill in the story including their buying habits and their relationship to your business.
Once you have your perfect persona example, utilize it for everything from your web design to sales materials to advertising and see how deeply it resonates.
If you’d like more including a template you can use to develop your own buyer persona, download our eBook.
