Creating Your Customer Persona or Avatar
Marketing personas are like the foundation for building your marketing house.
Customer Persona, Buyer Persona, Customer Avatar and sometimes referred to as Marketing Personas are interchangeable terms.
Depending on the industry and customers you serve, one of these terms may resonate more than the others, but essentially they all mean the same thing.
It is a tool to get a better and deeper understanding of your target audience, the one that will buy from you.
Armed with this information, you and your team (Internal or Outsourced) can create relevant content to attract and relate to your customers, at an emotional level. Understand that the highest percentage of purchases are emotional.
That is to say, a person will buy from you to solve a problem. But also understand it will first be emotional, to avoid pain, gain pleasure, or status, to name a few. Then logic takes over to “justify” their decision.
There is plenty of science to back this up, so I would also suggest you do some reading on the subject. But I digress….
So you can see how important it is to take the time to collaborate with your marketing team and your employees! Your employees can be an overlooked resource to help in this department.
It may sound obscure, but they really are not that difficult to create. It really comes down to asking yourself the right questions. You will likely add to them, change them, and tweak them over time. You can Google “Marketing Personas” and get a long list of resources to help you.
Most of the time these personas start as simple demographic targets, “Men 35 to 65 years old”. By asking the right questions you can really narrow down your “Audience Segment” that will be your best customer, your Marketing/Buyer/Client Persona.