You are an entrepreneur and you have identified a need and created a solution to it, how then would you get to the people you are creating the product for? This what creating a brand persona does for you.
Sometimes, actually, most times you need to know these people beyond just their need for your product. You need to know their personality, age, where you can find them, what they do, what their challenges are as individuals, who they are, who they want to be and many other information that people would naturally not care about. You must be able to describe your target market as an individual. It not only gives you an edge over your competitors, it closes the emotional space between you and your customer because you become real to them. You are not perceived as a product but as a friend or more.
Your product or service needs personality. It needs to talk to them even before your marketer says a word. You may not even need a marketer, the product would market itself via word of mouth.
So how can you communicate to your consumer on a one on one level?
CREATE A BRAND PERSONA!. A brand persona is the specific person of your target audience. The persona addresses the demographics, psychographics, challenges and motivations of your target audience. Personas are representations of your target audience based on research and interviews. From PR to digital to advertising, any marketing team or agency can benefit from developing client- and/or brand-specific personas. It shows the demographic, psychographic, It trims your target audience into an individual.
Why personas are important:
According to Matt Dickman,
- Personas put a face on the customer. Some persona programs give people names so you can refer to them and see them in a physical representation. The agency Organic creates persona rooms where their people live so the project team can become fully immersed.
- Personas remove the tendency to think of yourself as the customer. You have to step back and this gives you the structure to do so.
- Act as a guide throughout the process of developing marketing communications programs, cross mediums (print, digital, outdoor, TV, etc.).
- Keeps designers, copywriters, programmers on track and avoids waste by remaining focused on the customer.
A persona describes your target audience as an individual. It is a very important brand development tool because it determines everything.
According to Hubspot, Buyer personas are “fictional”, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.
The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)
Personas take time and research to get right. Research demands some time in the field and meeting face-to-face with the customer. People think they know their customer without looking at data and interacting with the customer. Personas are often used up front in the marketing strategy process and don’t carry through the process.
To avoid this,
- Get data. Collect it from the web and third party sources. Analyze web traffic. Do in-person interviews and ethnography. Get a big picture view and then analyze it objectively.
- Talk to your customers. Videotape them. Record the audio. Take notes. Come back with a real feeling for who you are trying to reach.
- Compare what you saw to the data and look for the insights.
- Evolve the personas over time. Adapt them as your product lines change or the economy changes. These should be living, breathing entities.
How then do you create a brand persona?
Save this infographic and use it to build your brand persona.
Develop your personal brand using this. Base your persona on who you want your personal brand to appeal to. I hope you find this article helpful.
Love,
Einsteinette.com