Persona in marketing - what is it and how to create it?

Every entrepreneur who wants to be successful in the market must know as much as possible about his potential clients. Knowing your target group allows you to create tailored marketing strategies, achieve your sales goals and generate attractive profits. How to obtain customer data and systematize it in a transparent way? Persona in marketing is the solution!

What will you learn from the article?

Understanding your target group is the key to success. One of the most effective tools that can help you with this is creating marketing personas. But what exactly is a marketing persona and why is it worth defining?

Introducing a persona allows marketers to gain a deeper understanding of the needs, desires and problems of their potential customers. This allows us to direct ours marketing activities in a more precise and effective way. In this article, we will guide you step by step through the process of creating a persona, showing where to look for information about your target group and how to use this data to build effective marketing strategies.

Are you ready to discover how defining your persona precisely can change your approach to marketing? Let's dive in!

What is persona in marketing?

If you want to operate effectively in the market, you need to find out who your potential customers are. Persona in marketing is just that idea about the audience. This is an exemplary person belonging to your target group. The idea of creating a persona is to visualize and personalize the recipient by giving him specific features. What distinguishes a persona from a brand archetype? First of all, more detailed characteristics. The person is made up of comprehensive demographic and psychological data. Persona is not only a description of the personality, but also any factors that may have a direct or indirect influence on purchasing decisions. Why is it worth defining a persona in marketing? 

Why define a persona in marketing?

Do you know why many marketing campaigns fail? Often the reason is wrong definition of the target group. Determining the target in many cases boils down to preparing a short description of the potential recipient, taking into account his age, gender and basic needs. However, it is not enough to drive efficiently marketing activities. The basis of each strategy should be a well-defined persona. 

Creating a persona in marketing increases the chances of reaching the target audience with your message. Thanks to it, you can create relevant, consistent and targeted campaigns and run effective marketing communication in the appropriate channels.

Thanks to the persona:

• you will prepare valuable content for your website,
• you will create effective ads in Google Ads or Facebook Ads,
• you will prepare scripts for individual sales departments,
• you will build a solid strategy based on real values.

Defining the persona is also helpful in content marketing, which is currently one of the most important advertising tools. Knowing the specific needs and characteristics of customers, as well as having a wide knowledge of how their purchasing process is going, you can easily prepare valuable content tailored to their expectations. Content they'll want to read and share, helping your brand grow.

Persona plays an incredibly important role in marketing! The better and more precisely you define your model client, the easier it will be to conduct marketing activities. Establishing a persona is your chance for market success.

Create a persona step by step

Specifying a persona in marketing requires a bit of commitment. A model client is not only a name, surname, age and gender. Characteristics are not only related to the person themselves, but also to their motivations, likes, aspirations and other elements. 

Considerations when determining your persona include:

• general data - apart from the above-mentioned, they also include the place of residence, education, profession and interests,
• role in the social group - e.g. role in the family, scope of duties related to this role, contribution to the home budget,
• the language he uses on a daily basis - both in his professional and private life,
• goals and values - life motto, professed hierarchy of values, passions,
• lifestyle and habits - daily rituals, favorite ways of spending free time, preferred forms of transport,
• financial situation - monthly earnings, accumulated savings, loans, 
• fears and problems - any fears related to everyday life, problems that can be solved by the product offered by the company, to what extent, 
• shopping preferences - traditional or online shopping, payment in cash or by card, large purchases once in a while or small ones - more often, average expenditure on a single purchase.

This seemingly insignificant information can be an amazing support in creating a brilliant marketing campaign. Defining the profile of the ideal client helps to choose the appropriate form of promotion, facilitates the preparation of effective advertising messages, and also indicates what to pay attention to in the language of benefitsto arouse the interest of your audience.

Where to find information about the target group?

Your website is a real mine of information about your recipients. By analyzing the keywords they enter into the search engine, website behavior and shopping path, you will find out what their desires are and what their preferences are. Also closely follow social media, forums and other thematic sites. Check who adds entries with questions about your products, their substitutes and the industry in which you operate. The Internet is a real treasure of knowledge about your potential customers.

You can also use polls and interviews in your research. Ask your audience what they expect, what is important to them, what they pay special attention to. Find out what their problems are and what is difficult for them. 

In creating a persona in marketing, the opinions of the entire employee team can be helpful - not only from the marketing department employees, but also from salespeople, product creators or people dealing with customer service. Everyone has their own experiences and thoughts about clients. By sharing them, you can get a realistic and very detailed image of the persona.

Can you create more than one persona in marketing? Of course, especially if your offer is varied. Remember, however, that each persona should be matched with completely different messages and advertising creations, based on different ones marketing strategies.