The importance of persona in building a marketing strategy

The primary objective of any marketing activity is to attract new customers, which translates into company growth and increased profits. To achieve this, it is necessary to build an effective and well-thought-out strategy based on the definition of the target group.

Is there a universal message?

Awareness of who the company's recipients are allows to create an ideal strategy that will bring measurable benefits. The more attention is paid to studying the needs of potential customers, the easier it will be to build relationships with them, influence their level of involvement and adjust the content of communication accordingly. It is impossible to create a universal message that will attract everyone's attention, even if it concerns a generally used item. A standardised and very general advertisement will be too boring to attract anyone's interest and attention. Advertising that targets a specific audience and relates to the principles, values, and interests of that audience will certainly be much more beneficial.

Persona building in marketing strategy

Defining a brand's target audience is one of the most important steps in creating a company's marketing strategy. If your brand does not yet have a specific target audience it is worth creating one as a basis for communication. Well profiled messages save not only time but also money. Now the question arises - what does the term "persona" mean and what is its function?

A precise method used to define the target group is building personas. This allows you to better understand your potential customers. Imagine, instead of data, a specific person behind them. Together with their weaknesses, interests and problems. So let's start by explaining what a persona is? It is nothing else than a meticulous outline of a potential representative of the target group, the so-called ideal customer. In order to properly build a persona, you should start by analyzing your current customers. This is a tedious process, but one which brings positive effects. Various tools are very helpful during this process, which allow you, for example, to study the needs of customers on the basis of keywords searched by them in the Internet search engine. The more you know about what your customers are looking for in the network, the faster you will build a profile of your persona.

Why are personae important?

Creating several persona profiles is extremely helpful during the design process. These profiles primarily serve to discuss the needs of users from specific target groups and the functionality of the product you are working on. Creating a persona burdened with specific characteristics, needs and interests prevents transferring one's own needs and preferences to non-existing users, which is common without such a procedure, but at the same time very natural - everyone makes a decision through the prism of their own needs. Personas can be referred to during the creation process - on their basis you can decide whether a particular person will understand a given form of advertising, and even whether the operation of a given product will be clear and simple for them. Personas remind us for which users we are designing, they help to determine what information is needed to fully understand the product by the users.

How to define a persona?

There are several key pieces of information and issues to focus on. They allow you to create a complete persona for effective branding. These include, first and foremost:

Demographics and background data - there is very important information such as where you live, gender, age and education. It is completely different to talk to a young and active woman from a big city and a man in his 50s who has spent all his life in a small town or in the countryside. When building a brand it is impossible to combine extreme groups of recipients into one and build a universal message. It will not be effective. That is why you should choose a specific group at this point and consistently build a persona based on it.
Occupation - here you should specify the position occupied, the type and size of the company, the industry and the scope of responsibilities. This narrows down the prospecting circle of the persona, thus finding out what potential background your target customers may have, as well as what products they may need in their professional lives.
Daily life, interests and rituals - these determine the points of contact with the brand. The time of waking up, spending free time, the type of transport used, etc. are important. Communication is planned differently with someone who watches videos in his free time, and someone who only has time to listen to the radio and audiobooks. In one case, a more effective form of advertising will be ads in the newspaper that a person reads every morning before breakfast, in another case, a half-hour podcast or ad on the radio, which another person listens to on the way to work.
Problems and Needs - This topic is all about identifying what problems your target audience has and how they can be solved and how to address specific needs. These should relate quite casually to the product being offered. This identification helps to focus the interest. This is because everyone wants to find a solution to their problems.
Values - What values does the customer have? What ambitions does he have? There may be different reasons for buying a particular thing - from the desire to possess to pleasing someone.
Fear - This is one of the strongest motivators to take action. Making the customer aware of unfavorable scenarios will trigger his desire to protect himself from the consequences of not having the product.

The analyzed information will allow you to create an ideal potential customer, or persona. This will make it much easier to plan an effective content marketing strategy. It should also be noted that these activities allow not only to increase profits by selling the product, but also by saving money. Advertising aimed at a smaller, but interested target group will be cheaper and more effective than targeting a much larger, but undefined group.

As Tango Branding Agency, we are aware how important analytical activities and market research are before taking the first project actions. We look for the most effective solutions and answers to the question in which environment our brand operates, to whom and what it communicates. We are convinced that a good strategy translates into effective communication and sales.