Elements of a Marketing Persona
Every persona has multiple elements that help you to envision your ideal customer. Here are the ones I use most often to create experiences that they would engage with: Persona Name & Image When you assign your persona a name, you will see them as a real person. This is important because these personas represent real life people. Admittedly, I can be a little cheesy when creating mine. I’ve had names such as, Marketing Manager Megan, Business Owner Bailey and Personal Trainer Pete. In addition to having a name, personas should also have a photo. You can use websites like Pexels to find free images to go with each profile. Whenever you are creating a campaign that targets a specific audience, you’ll be able to visualize the person you are marketing to. Demographic Profile Next we want to understand more about where the personal is geographically and where they are in their stage of life. Here are some characteristics that may benefit your targeting:- Age
- Location (Country, State, or City)
- Income
- Education
- Marital Status
- Family Size
B2B-Specific Elements
In addition to the above marketing persona information, there are other elements that you’d typically include when targeting businesses: Company Information Creating a profile of the business itself helps you to understand which stage they are in, what their current needs are and what additional challenges they may face. A company that has been in business for 3 months would have very different needs than one that has been around for 3 years. Some information that may help you in targeting includes: company revenue, number of employees, number of locations, and the job titles of the person using/buying your product/service. When you know more about the company, you can also add more challenges and goals to your lists. For example, if a company is fairly new, they likely have staff members that wear multiple hats and handling the responsibilities of more than one position. They are on a lean budget but will invest in necessary solutions. If a company is established, they likely have extra money in their budget for products or services that will make their staff/processes more efficient. They may also have a longer process for purchasing. Each company will have its own set of challenges at each stage of business, so the more you can learn, the better your marketing will be. Purchasing Processes One other set of information you may find useful is the chain of command for purchasing. I briefly mentioned this above but it’s important to know, so I want to be thorough. In many organizations there is a process when a staff member wants to buy something for their department. There are situations where someone has to submit it to their department head and they have the authority to simply approve it. Other times, these requests have to be approved by the finance department and require a purchase order. These processes can take anywhere from a few days to over a week. And in some cases, they have to wait for a new quarter to start before their funds refresh. This information is key when deciding when and how to deliver your message to your marketing personas.B2C-Specific Elements
B2C personas also have additional information that can be added to your profile to give you more insight. Lifestyle There are times when someone’s lifestyle can come into play in marketing. Some details include:- Living Situation (lives alone, with significant other, with family/kids, in retirement home, etc.)
- Activities & Hobbies (play/watch sports, enjoys fine dining, entertains at home, likes fitness activities, likes to travel, volunteers often, close with family, etc.)
- Assets (Owns home, car, boat, income property, etc.)
Where to Find Information for Your Marketing Persona Elements
Now that you know what information you should include in your personas, let’s look at the places to find all the information.Surveys
Creating surveys to get information from your actual customers is the best way to find the answers you seek. You’re getting first-hand insights that tend to give you even more inspiration for crafting the best messaging. If you have a client base that you can offer a survey to, start there.Analytics
If you have analytics set up on your website, (if not, set up Google Analytics) you can view basic demographic information about customers. Under the audience tab, you can view demographics, interests, location, the device they used to access your site and more.
Reviews
When customers leave a review, they typically give you great insight to what the product or service did for the and why they are happy—or unhappy. Read through your reviews and your competitors reviews. Essentially, you can find out what problems you can solve and what wording they are using for when it’s time to write your copy.Keyword Research
We can learn a lot about what topics people are looking for using keyword research. One of my favorite free tools is Keywords Everywhere. They have a great Chrome browser extension that allows you to see how many people are searching for specific terms and variations of them with every search.
Quora
This online forum has questions from individuals on just about any topic you can think of. Simply type in a subject and it will show you a list of questions. You can also ask questions in Quora, too. In the example below, I typed in catering and here are some of the questions that came up.
Answer the Public
This site is different from others that you see all the time. There’s an angry guy that “greets” you when the page loads. However, it has great insight into questions surrounding various topics. In the example below, I typed in life insurance and it gave me this list of questions that people have searched for around the keyword.
How to Use Your Marketing Personas
Now that you have all the detailed information about your customers in the form of a marketing persona, what can you do with it? Actually, quite a bit! Any time you are planning a campaign, writing a blog post, crafting a social media post, composing ad copy, or any other form of marketing communication, use your personas. With each promotion, you should know who you are speaking to and where they are in the buying process. You should always have content for each persona in each stage of your sales funnel. So, use your personas to guide you to sending the right message at the right times. Until next time…Want more marketing tips & tricks?
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Article Name
How to Create Marketing Personas
Description
Discover the best-kept secret of marketing professionals to get results with your promotions. Learn how to create marketing personas to focus your messaging.
Author
Rebecca Bertoldi