How to create a Digital Marketing Persona

When creating a marketing strategy, there are various aspects to consider; your company’s marketing persona is one of the most important. We live in a time where most consumers begin their buying process online through search engines. With this in mind, you must cultivate a compelling company narrative that effectively speaks to your desired consumer audiences.

Similar to establishing a brand, marketing personas require calculated decisions and analytics to generate results. When executed correctly, your company’s persona will make your organization prosperous. This article will highlight the foundational steps in creating your company persona for digital marketing.

1. What is a Persona?

A persona is a representation of your current customers, including their interests, values, and emotions. This profile defines customers by who they are and what impulses they have when purchasing, tapping into their psyche to analyze their physical and emotional needs.

Personas are a critical aspect of analyzing your current customer base and understanding how to create messages that speak to them personally. Dissection of company consumers is crucial in developing relevant and effective digital marketing campaigns.

2. How will creating a persona benefit you?

To align your message with the needs of consumers, developing an in-depth persona will accelerate your business by attracting motivated buyers.

Buyer personas will affect numerous business decisions, including:

The style and type of marketing content you will release
Which media outlets should you utilize
What should be included versus excluded from your marketing and sales process
What consumer products and services should you offer

With these categories in mind, it will help you develop a more strategic marketing plan with better-defined goals. With an evolved plan of action, your company will benefit from:

Increased website traffic from motivated consumers/clients
Increased brand awareness, making your company’s image more recognizable to target audiences
Increased qualified lead generation for your sales teams

3. How do you create a persona?

Creating an impactful persona requires numerous steps with layered processes. A rule of thumb is to start by selecting three personas and then refining them in more detail over time after asking the correct people the right questions. To get started, the following is a step-by-step process that will help you structure your personas:

1. Internal Interviews:

Collaborate with your internal teams that work closest with your consumers. Meeting your sales, marketing, and customer service teams will offer more direct insight into what your consumers think and why they make their decisions. Provide your teams with knowledge about what personas are, then ask them relevant questions, including:

Why do various customers make specific purchases?
What are some reasons why customers choose us before one of our competitors?
What are frequent customer objections?
What digital content receives the most attention?
Which website pages have the most impressions?
What are some frequently asked questions?
What are current customers saying about the products/services?

2. Conversations with Customers:

How will you ever know your consumers’ likes and dislikes if you never take the time to ask them? The answer is you won’t know. You must first learn their language to develop a message that speaks to your customers.

Questions to ask your consumers include:

What are their demographics: gender, age, location, and income?
What career, job level, experience, education, and aspirations do they possess?
What are their hobbies, day-to-day activities, and daily frustrations?
What consumer habits do they exude: shopping behavior and technology habits?
What are their pain points? (What makes them anxious or frustrated? And, how would they feel if the problem was solved?)

These key questions will allow access to how your customer thinks and experiences emotions, ultimately providing information about how, why, and what they buy.

3. Collect the data and develop your persona:

Separate your data into two categories:

Qualitative data: Information compiled from internal teams and customers
Hard data: Information compiled from web analytics and tools measuring what the people who visit your site have in common

Once the data is collected and dissected, create your persona(s) profiles using:

Descriptive names
Demographic data includes their daily life, struggles/challenges, and consumer behavior (purchasing habits)
Create imagery to develop a visualization of persona(s)
Key indicators your team will use in the future to create appropriate messages for prospects

After developing your company’s persona and familiarizing yourself with your consumers, you will be able to reach more audiences with a more direct, impactful company message. The effort will prove to be prosperous.

With the help of Advanced Media Pro (AMP), you will have a detailed plan for your company’s persona. AMP will develop a marketing strategy based on your current persona that will include branding, content creation, and reporting. Feel free to reach out to find out how Advanced Media Pro can improve your marketing efforts.

About AMP

Based in San Diego, California, we are a small marketing agency with a creative team that celebrates 20+ years of experience in traditional and digital marketing. We recognize that marketing is a cornerstone of a brand’s success but that some businesses struggle to meet their marketing goals, so we made it our goal!

AMP provides virtual marketing management to all types of companies without the expense of having a marketing professional on staff, we work as an extension of your team to generate more leads for your business’ growth. Focus on running your business while we focus on running your marketing!

Want to learn more or start working with us? Email one of our experts today at [email protected] or give us a call at (858) 564-0336!

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