• Reaching out to your prospects based on age, gender, or income might still miss the mark in several areas.
• Modern consumers will quickly abandon brands that don’t support their ever-changing values, and they will also spend more money with companies that learn to speak their language.
• Personas enable you to speak your customer’s language so you can share stories that mirror their interests and become a brand that they want to do business with.

By Karen Kimerer

Introduction

All businesses have their favorite customers, and the ability to replicate them can put you on the fast track to business success. For this very reason, the practice of developing customer personas is growing in popularity. According to the Marketing Insider Group, 93% of companies that exceed their revenue goals segment their databases by buyer persona.

Creating a customer persona involves developing a deep understanding of your customers’ needs and establishing a plan to address them. Evaluating your current customers in terms of demographics, company size, and industry type is a good place to start, but the findings are often shallow and offer little insight. A persona identifies the personality and character of your ideal customer. It is built around a fictional person and includes basic customer data like business type, job title, and income. A persona gets into what drives a customer’s motivations, needs, and expectations. It can paint a clear picture of where these ideal customers live, what they do in their spare time, and how they engage with their favorite brands. Just imagine the possibilities that could be uncovered if you shaped your marketing messages with this information!

Take Aim…and Hit Your Target!

It’s great that we have access to so much customer data in this day and age, but it can still be difficult for businesses to make sense of this data so they approach their audience with the right messaging. For example, reaching out to your prospects based on age, gender, or income might still miss the mark in several areas. Not all female Gen Xers with similar annual incomes will have the same passions or priorities. In fact, attempting to “force” consumers into rigid demographic buckets will often backfire and cause more harm than good.

The reality is that today’s customers can be quite different from the customers of just two years ago. According to a recent study from Accenture, half of consumers agreed that the pandemic caused them to rethink their personal purposes and re-evaluate what’s important to them. As a result, modern consumers will quickly abandon brands that don’t support their ever-changing values—and they will also spend more money with companies that learn to speak their language!

Figure 1. Half of Consumers Are Rethinking Their Priorities

N = 25,444 Total Consumer Respondents

Source: Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research 2021; Chart Recreated by Keypoint Intelligence

This implies that marketers and sales organizations have much to lose if they continue with traditional methods when attempting to capture and retain today’s customers. Businesses that neglect the process of establishing customer personas run the risk of diluting their business development efforts with apathetic prospects and customers.     

Keep It Simple

Creating a customer persona is important, but it doesn’t need to be complicated! In fact, it’s likely that much of the information you need is readily available. A customer persona is nothing more than a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on what you already know about your existing customers.   

If you aren’t sure where to begin, consider the quantitative data you collect from surveys, market research, and existing databases of current and former customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems house valuable information like job title, level of education, and organizational structure. Naturally, basic demographics (e.g., gender, age, and annual income) are important, but they should be combined with communication preferences, how social media is consumed, and where your customers obtain the information they need to do their jobs.  

Qualitative data gleaned from one-on-one interviews and conversations can further shape your data records. Details like individual goals, hobbies, interests, and social behaviors can all add value and flavor to your customer persona. A big part of a customer persona involves identifying the challenges your ideal customers face as well as any objections they might have to your products and services.

Well-designed customer personas have structure. Due to the variety of data that is available to today’s businesses, it’s a good idea to define the information you want to gather, then develop a template that can be followed. Many marketers find it helpful to create a persona for each market niche that they serve. Regardless of how many personas you establish, the goal is to ensure that your offerings align with each fictitious personality. 

Reaping the Rewards

Customer personas help businesses engage with their desired audience in a meaningful way. They enable you to speak your customer’s language so you can share stories that mirror their interests and become a brand that they want to do business with. Ultimately, well-defined personas lend strategy to developing content that will drive customer engagement.  

For this reason, your entire organization must be clear on the personas that you took the time to create. In fact, it’s not unusual to give each persona an individual name. For example, all of your team members could learn that “Riley the Researcher” will always conduct a great deal of research before making his decision. Meanwhile, “Marilyn the Mobile Maven” might want to do as much as possible from her smartphone. Basically, these personas become your customer archetypes. When you talk about them like they’re real people, everyone in your firm can take part in creating and delivering a customer experience that individuals fitting that persona are most likely to appreciate.

The Bottom Line

No one wants to be overtly sold to, so sales and marketing organizations of all types and sizes are tasked with finding better and more effective ways to engage their audience members. When it comes to developing a growth strategy, data is king—but it can’t stand on its own! Your customer data must be shaped to reveal a precise understanding of the people and markets you want to serve. Today’s customers will seek out opportunities to do business with brands that reflect their unique values. Make the commitment to define your ideal customer types, then update your content to mirror their interests. If you aren’t sure how to get started, there are many persona examples and templates online that can help you. With the right tools, you can take your existing data and make it work for you!

Karen Kimerer of Keypoint Intelligence has experienced the many challenges of expanding current market opportunities and securing new business. She has developed a systematic approach to these opportunities, addressing the unique requirements of becoming a leader in our changing industry. She is well-versed in 1:1 marketing, web-to-print, direct mail, book publishing, supply chain management, data segmentation, channel integration, and photo products.