A key part of any marketer’s job is to fully understand who their customers are in order to inform the decisions they make. With the rise in popularity of social media, it’s now becoming a lot easier for businesses to gather data on their customers.Â
However, gathering the data is just one step in the process. Learning how to analyze and utilize the data is far more important. That’s where customer personas come in.Â
In this article, we’ll be telling you everything you need to know about customer personas, and giving you a rundown of how they can help your business. So let’s start at the beginning…
What is a customer persona?Â
Well, in a nutshell, a customer persona is a hypothetical persona that has been developed using data gathered from social media. They are a simple way of telling a story about your customers that gives a good overview of what type of person you should try to target.Â
The persona represents an average customer and is a compilation of key information about them. The persona itself can help to inform your marketing strategy by giving your marketers a better idea of who they are marketing to and what motivates your average customer to make a purchase.Â
Above is an example of what a simple customer persona should look like. It should include key information about the customer such as:Â
- Demographic information – age, geolocation, occupation, etc.
- Motivations – How does customer find your site/why do they make a purchase?
- Influences – Did they engage with videos, pictures? which social platforms do they use?
Although this customer is completely hypothetical, the information that you use to create the customer should be taken from the data you have collected.
By using tools like Facebook analytics you can get a better understanding of exactly who your customers are, and how they are most likely to get to your site. In fact, you can track their exact path across devices and get a really clear picture of what type of people are most likely to make a purchase from your site.Â
For example, if you find that a high percentage of your customers made a purchase on your site after interacting with an ad about an upcoming sale, then you could surmise that your ‘hypothetical’ customer is motivated by low prices and discounts.
After reviewing your data, you may find that your customer base can be split into a few different customer personas that represent a full picture of the data that you’ve collected.
So, how can customer personas help your business?
Well in much the same way that you would use email segmentation, customer personas help to focus your marketing strategy and ensure that you get the highest possible ROI. Below are 3 reasons why customer personas are an important tool for businesses.Â
They simplify thingsÂ
Thanks to Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics, you can basically learn anything you want to know about your customers, bar what they just ate for dinner. However, sifting through that data can take a really long time, and when you’re planning out strategy with your marketing team, you need to have something simple and concrete to show them.Â
A customer persona is a small yet powerful resource that just about anyone can understand and it can be really useful to have, especially if you’re considering outsourcing marketing.Â
They help you to empathize with your customers
When it comes to business it’s really easy to see sales figures and statistics and forget about the people behind the dollar signs. However, it’s extremely important to stay in touch with your customer base and be able to connect with them in a way that seems authentic and trustworthy.Â
Creating a customer persona can help you and your marketers to better empathize with the customers that you are trying to appeal to and this, in turn, will help you to make smart decisions about what they want to see and what they will respond to.Â
Essentially, you’re putting a hypothetical face to the figures so that you don’t forget to add those personal touches that appeal to customers on a human level.Â
They can save you time and money
Customer Personas help you to analyze your data and focus your marketing efforts. There’s no point pushing ads or sending emails to people you know nothing about, as you have no idea how they’re going to respond.Â
Creating customer personas can help you to super-charge your marketing strategy so that it is well-thought-out, focused and inevitably more successful.
