How and Why You Should Create Personas in Marketing
Before opening or making a decision to develop a new venture, it is worth considering not only the selection of appropriate personnel, workplace supply, pricing strategy or graphic design. A guiding principle of the actions should be persona.
Its creation will provide the right conditions for planning further activities, bearing in mind the popular H2H approach, which places the client at the centre of the company's attention. From the customer's perspective, it is important to maintain indirect contact with the brand and feel the genuine care of the company.
What is a persona?
In marketing, we distinguish 3 types of personas:
Marketing Persona - will help us describe the behaviour or purchasing decisions of the target customer. It is responsible for designating specific groups to which we will direct our messages. An example of such a persona is a 24-year-old man studying science in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship and shopping online.
We base our statistics on information gathered by measurement tools. The more clues we have, the easier it is to guess the customer expectations.
Proto-persona- is a predicted model user (i.e. a prototype of a persona), which is created in cooperation with the team determining who will be the brand's customer. When planning, for example, the profession, needs, habits and characteristics of the recipient are determined, which will allow defining their expectations. Proto - persona is needed, for example, in the UX design process when creating business applications.
Design persona - focuses on specific points regarding customer’s behaviour and problems when making purchasing decisions. In order to present the design persona well in a specific group of consumers, we need to exchange insights with people we are interested in. When creating the history of the product, we collect the following data:
- how people make decisions,
- what is the relationship between the decision and the action.
When collecting new information, it is worth remembering to update your data each time. Persona is characterized by flexibility and change over time.
Why create a persona?
Effective delivery of the message to the client depends on many factors: the selection of appropriate information distribution channels, media, or the tone of speech. Persona as a model of the character who is to buy our product has features that distinguish it from the environment. The ideal client has his own habits, problems, family life, he works or studies or lives in a given demographic area. Bearing in mind the features of the persona, we are able to undertake effective marketing activities.
How to create a persona?
Let’s assume we want to set up a shop selling handmade scented candles. Such a simple idea should be developed by asking ourselves a few questions on the basis of which we will analyze the available data and customer behaviour. In addition to relying on your own decisions, it is worth checking the popularity of the topic on the Internet or asking your relatives for their opinion in order to have an objective view of the whole situation.
Examples of questions:
- When are we going to make candles? (in advance / on request / in stock)
- How will we sell them? (stationary / online)
- On what platforms will we present them?
- On what occasions do people buy candles? (gifts / for interior decor)
- What price will be attractive to buyers?
Knowing the hypothetical requirements of customers, defining effective promotion channels and types of content, let's create two personas to which we will direct the sale of candles. There is no predefined number of personas, but you should not create more than 8, because it will be difficult to devote enough attention to everyone. Depending on our experience and scope of activity, we can have more or less of them, during the development of our channel or enterprise, we can always create another one. However, remember to regularly verify the creations you already have.
The ideal customer profile - this is the basic stage of creating a persona. It consists in visualizing the biographical image of the future client representing the target group. By asking questions when building a silhouette, it will be easier to precisely define who your client is. The questions and answers will both differ as there is no one-size-fits-all list or clear-cut preferences. An influencer promoting a primer, working mostly on the web, will have a different audience and a different campaign than the local store known to everyone in the area. In defining the persona, the scope of the questions' detail allows us to understand customer motivation.
Examples of questions:
- What is the client's age and gender?
- Where does he live? (city/village, voivodship, country)
- What are his habits? (daily rituals, leisure activities, etc.)
- What values are important to him? (what is important for the customer? e.g. free delivery)
- What are the problems? (what is it looking for, how can your product or service help to solve these problems?)
- What is his material status? (what cash does he have?)
- What are his shopping preferences? (what is he avoiding and what would he like to look at?)
- What is the expected customer service model? (it doesn't matter, everyone likes to get a nice service)
- For what purposes is your customer using your product?
We will present you the personas that we created for the purpose of starting a candle business.
| Anna Przybylska | Małgorzata Zając |
| a woman over 50 | a girl about 16 years old |
| lives in Miłoszyce in the Dolnośląskie Voivodeship in Poland | lives in the centre of Wrocław in the Dolnośląskie Voivodeship in Poland |
| enjoys relaxing baths twice a week | likes to come to the store after classes and look for new patterns and scents of candles |
| likes ‘3 for the price of 2’ promotions | likes discounted candles |
| looks for a nice scent that would float in the air and maintain a pleasant atmosphere | looking for gifts for her relatives/friends |
| she is doing well and can afford to spend more | gets pocket money once a month |
| doesn't like simplicity, each candle must have its own unique shape | prefers candles with the scent of exotic fruit |
| service is irrelevant, as she orders online and the package arrives on time | likes to have someone with her to help her make a decision |
| uses scented candles for relaxation purposes | she gives candles to her relatives/friends, she likes when there is a pleasant fragrance in the room |
Having characterized parts of the market, which we will refer to using our personas, we can start creating the offer and the entire product communication. This approach contributes to success, whether it concerns a young influencer who launches his first product on the market, an experienced entrepreneur who extends the offer, or companies with long traditions that want to refresh their image and change the way of communication.
The Native Hash editorial team is made up of experienced specialists and enthusiasts of influencer marketing.