The starting point for any marketing strategy is to identify your audience and who it is that you are targeting. This sounds obvious right? Not always.
What if you have a B2B and B2C audience?
What if your audience is completely different depending on the channels you use?
And what if the stakeholders in the business simply cannot agree where to focus their efforts at this stage?
This is where user personas come in.
What is a user persona?
A user persona (or customer persona, if it's more relevant) is a fictitious character that you create in order to act as a representation of one segment of your audience.
You'll most likely give him/her a name, talk about their lifestyle (or work life) and their online habits and information sources. But crucially you will also identify their motivations for engaging with your brand and any objections they may have to engaging with you online.
Marketers tend to create three personas - each to represent a different segment of your audience, or perhaps a different need or motivation to want to engage or interact with your brand.
Why are they great?
Firstly, they bring together the stakeholders of your business and align your thinking in terms of who you are targeting. Sometimes this in itself has been a huge stumbling block.
Secondly they take away the subjectivity of decision-making. Instead of saying 'do we think this campaign idea is right for the business', you'll be saying 'do we think that this campaign will resonate with Tommy (User persona 1) and move him to take action and start the journey to conversion online?'
And lastly they help you to empathise with your customers online and to understand their habits and motivations so that you can tailor your design, content and overall digital marketing approach to their needs.
Where do you start?
Ideally you would start by analysing the behaviour of your existing users, by interrogating website analytics, CRM integrations leading to conversions and social media and online marketing habits.
If this data is not available to you perhaps instead you could conduct some research amongst your existing customers. Poll them on their typical habits and motivations. Ask about any pain points they have experienced, when interacting with the brand online.
If none of this is possible - or you are just starting out and feel overwhelmed by the idea of bringing your potential customers to life - don't worry. The reality is that no matter how much data you have to fall back on, user personas will always be based on hypothesis as they will only ever represent a segment of your vast potential audience online.
It is therefore totally fine to create a ‘starter for ten’ based on assumptions at this stage. The important thing to remember is that you can (and very much should) revisit these user personas as you research more about your users and their habits over time.
How are they used?
As I mentioned above, user personas take away any subjectivity in decision making and put the customer at the heart of important marketing decisions.
Let's take a look at two scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Say a business is presented with three design options for a new website theme. In the past, maybe choices have been made because the founder likes blue (sound familiar?!). Now you will be looking at these designs through the eyes of Tommy over there, our budding photographer, who can't bear to read too much online and is put off by cheesy stock photography!
Scenario 2:
Maybe your social media manager is devising his/her quarterly campaign to promote the summer product range and has a cool idea for a hashtag and content-themed campaign. Enter Tommy; Does the content resonate with him? Is he/she planning to facilitate the campaign via the correct channels to reach him? Is there a clear motivation for him to engage?
As a digital marketing professional I find user personas invaluable; I can't really work without them. After reviewing them, I can quickly understand who my client is trying to target and create digital marketing strategies that are specifically tailored to those individuals. In fact, when I first start speaking to clients about their marketing I will begin to devise user personas in my head to help me to envision the right approach for their online strategy.
Ok so in summary; what are the non-negotiables?
They must represent one of your primary audiences and therefore one of your major user groups online
They should be based in reality. Ideally they would be based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, but if you are relying on a top level hypothesis at this stage, then make sure that they at least represent real people!
They should not just be about who the user is and what they like. They should give a clear picture of the individual's online habits [with scenario-based examples] of how they are likely to use your website, or interact with your brand online.
They should be used to help in decision-making for design; to improve functionality in order to drive conversion and increase engagement and interaction with the brand online.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you created user personas for your business? Do you use them to test decisions as you start to review your marketing strategy? How else have your used them to help make critical decisions for your business?
Comments