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INTRODUCTION :
Have you ever used a persona, or you have no idea what it is? In both cases, this article will cover everything about a tool that is essential to a marketing strategy.
What is a persona?
WHAT (Definition)
A persona in marketing is a fictitious representation of your ideal customer. Concretely, it’s about building a profile of the customer you love to work with, based on research and interviews. Between qualitative and quantitative information, this persona presents the real motivations of the targets, their objectives, problems and buying behavior.
WHY (The Benefits)
The role of a persona is multiple in a commercial or inbound marketing context. Mainly, it is built in order to streamline the sales process, to improve the efficiency of the digital strategy and/or to improve your customer support.
- Objectivity: The interest of creating multiple personas is to adapt your speeches according to your different audiences, and this in an objective way.
- Strategy: By developing personas, you will really know the needs and desires of your customers. Consequently, you will be able to increase the performance of all commercial strategies.
- Quality: Creating personas will inevitably result in a better quality of content. In fact, identifying your customers’ motivations will help you develop customized content.
PURPOSE (Concretely)
A persona will allow you to share a typical customer profile with the rest of your team, to build content accordingly, to enable a custom website redesign, to meet specific needs or to improve your SEO, digital marketing and sales strategy.
A persona, how do you create it?
1/ WHO (Identity)
With the possible help of a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you can identify the gender, profession (CSP), age range, residence (center / periphery) and center of interests of your persona.Then, you can probe or caricature his or her typical day, his or her supposed relationship with your field of activity and his or her situation (married or not, child or not). Finally, you can find a photo and a first name to identify him/her.
2/ WHAT (Motivation)
This step is by far the most important. Indeed, it will allow you to identify the needs of the persona and to define their objectives and motivations. Note: a need is a necessity for a human being, where a goal is a means to express it. Thus, you can know how to respond precisely to well-founded problems.
3/ WHY (Objection)
Now that you have clearly defined your persona, ask yourself what they would think of your product or service. Also ask yourself what his or her objections would be to the purchase of your product or service. This step will allow you to identify areas for improvement. Indeed, thanks to the style, tone, state of mind and standard of living of your persona, you will know what to do and what not to do. It is therefore a key step in the conversion tunnel that allows you to increase sales.
4/ HOW (Conversion)
In this last step, we find the narration part. Indeed, it is a matter of writing in a few sentences the story of your persona, from the discovery of the offer, to the intervention of his need, until the achievement of your objective. Concretely, this step answers the persona’s path towards the final objective.Keep in mind that there is not just one path, but that it is important to identify which are the priority paths.
One persona, one example
The example below represents a persona for a digital company specialized in web design & development. Therefore, Mr. John Moore (owner of an SME in the insurance industry) represents an ideal client for a digital communication agency:
JOHN MOORE, BOSS OF A SME IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY
John Moore is 33 years old, he is married and has two young children. He is managing director of a small business in the insurance industry and is interested more globally in aeronautics, running and delicatessen. His main motivations are quality, references and proximity, and he is very comfortable (8/10) with digital. His typical day is animated by 8h30 of work (from 8am to 6:30pm) and then he takes care of his children.
VERBATIM
“We are in a phase of transformation, but without thinking about the impact of digital on the market or our future growth… Digital is going to revolutionize our business model but the transformation is complicated because boards of directors do not take into account the need to go digital.”
JOHN’S NEEDS
- To perpetuate its brand image
- Translating corporate values
- Communicate your concept online
OBJECTIVES FOR HIS SME
- Gain in notoriety
- Generating leads
- Gain in natural referencing
- Increase word-of-mouth among visitors
DISCOVER THE OFFER
- It searches on its search engine “digital agency”.
- Being based in the same geographical area, the agency appears first in Google search results.
- On LinkedIn, a friend of his shares his web project realized by the agency.
- During an appointment with a prospect, the latter gives him the business card of the agency.
PATH TO THE SOLUTION
- By clicking on the website, he likes the references: he then decides to contact the agency.
- At the first meeting, he tells us his needs and the agency offers him a solution.
- The service agreement as well as an estimate is sent to him by the agency: all he has to do is say yes.
POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS FROM JOHN
John’s main objections may be around price, language, proximity, time or team size.
COMMENTS
Nothing to report in this case.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the elaboration of one or more personas is not a very complicated work, which can ultimately help you to conclude many sales. To help you further, we propose a blank persona model to complete, according to your needs.