Your marketing budget is at a high level. You create interesting and attractive content. You focus on high quality graphics. You advertise, educate and inform. Regularity in social media is your middle name. Still, conversions are still not at a good level. The reason may be having only a general target group, not a marketing person. Today, we look at marketing persona not only in terms of their creation, but also in their usefulness in marketing processes and SEO activities.
Marketing persona – what is it all about?
People talk a lot about marketing, but not everyone knows what they are. A marketing person can be defined in various ways. Simply put, this is the type / profile of the client that represents the greater part of a particular group. Persona has its own individual characteristics, behaviors, values – these are the guiding principles when choosing a product or service. The so-called. buyer persons (or marketing persons) are fictional characters but have the characteristics of real customers. Their task is to facilitate the work of marketing, communication and sales departments. Thanks to them it is possible to design a communication path for a particular group of recipients.
To speak more scientifically, “Persons are fictional characters based on customer data that represent different segments of target audiences.” However, the simplest definition of marketing person is the ideal client of a given brand / product / service.
Perfect customer – how to find him?
Creating a marketing person requires a lot of time and attention. I recommend focusing on even the smallest details, because they can later be of great importance in communication. Person can be determined based on your own imagination – this is a solution for young brands, but it is also much better to reach for analytical data on already acquired customers. When looking for the perfect customer, you need to combine both demographic and psychographic data. Remember that persona is not only a description of the ideal customer’s personality, but also a set of all factors that may affect the purchasing process. What should a good description of marketing personnel contain?
– Demographics. They answer the question of who the ideal customer is. This part of the description includes information such as age, gender, place of residence, education, role in the family.
– The financial data”. They answer the question how much an ideal customer earns. This part of the description analyzes information such as the type of work performed, position held, scope of duties, industry, size of the company, amount of earnings (in the range), how much it spends, how it pays, where it buys, what savings it has.
– Data on rituals and behaviors. They answer the question of what a typical ideal customer’s day looks like. For each brand, different rituals and behaviors will be important, but it’s worth gathering them as much as possible. In this part you can, for example, describe how persona moves to work, what she does in her free time, where she goes on vacation, what she reads, what she eats for breakfast, what time she gets up, where she goes shopping, what her interests are, or browses the Internet on a computer or mobiles, at what times it is active on the network, etc. This subitem of description is one of the most important, because it allows you to immediately determine what points of contact with the brand can be and when they can occur, e.g. during a tram ride on universities.
– Data on needs. They answer the question, what is the ideal customer’s problem and how can you help him develop it? Problems may loosely relate to the services sold or be closely related to them. For example, a young mother may have a problem with lack of time for herself – the solution: she needs your time planner or e-book to organize yourself at home.
– Value data. They answer the question, what are the most important values, ambitions and goals of an ideal customer. This information is needed to determine the incentive that a marketing person will be given to make them want to buy.
– Data on concerns. They answer the question what an ideal customer is most afraid of. This type of information can also motivate the customer to act. The biggest fears are a good way to encourage action – e.g. you don’t want to have a stomach band, reach for an e-book with exercises or healthy recipes.
– Data on shopping behavior. They answer the question of how a perfect customer buys. This part of the description should contain information whether the client is susceptible to expert words, whether he pays attention to promotions, whether he values the recommendations of friends / family / influencers, whether he checks price comparisons, whether he focuses on quantity or quality.
Based on all this information, a description is created of the marketing person to whom the name is given and the photo is added. This allows you to better image the perfect customer. Good advice: it is best to add the photo at the very end (so as not to succumb to stereotypes based on the appearance), and also put on the most natural image possible.
When creating a marketing persona, it’s always worth reaching for professional tools. Thanks to them, it will be easier to obtain quantitative data and will not be a divination from coffee grounds. It is good to combine data with observations, as well as customer interviews (if any).
Client or clients – how many marketing persons should a brand have?
Hardly any company has only one marketing person. Typically, brands make up to 3 to 5 people. This is considered a minimum. However, you must remember not to force a dozen or so perfect clients. Creating a person is not about describing every possible customer on the market, but the one who can actually be the perfect brand. Another thing to remember is that each persona created should represent a different audience segment. Perfect customers cannot be almost identical and differ from each other only, e.g. by age.
It should also be mentioned here that marketing persona is not only a B2C business tool. Companies operating in the B2B sector should also take care of their creation.
Why is it worth to meet an ideal customer?
Marketing persona is primarily to improve the activities of marketing and sales departments. Creating them makes communication more effective, and so-called budget burnout smaller. Other benefits of meeting an ideal customer include:
– Defining the target group of the project, e.g. introducing new phones
models to the store,
– Understanding the needs of customers, their
goals and motivation, which allows, among others determine whether the
introduction of a new service / product makes sense,
– Adjusting brand communication (of all teams and
departments) to the language spoken by the customer, which will eliminate
errors and allow you to reach him and sell the product faster,
– Identifying the “places” where
customers are most often and conducting the most intensive marketing activities
there.
The role of marketing persona in the purchasing process
Marketing persona can play many roles in the purchasing process. Moreover, it will not always be involved in the transaction. It is therefore important to know the role of the person. They are divided according to the tasks they play.
The first role a persona can play is the buyer. He purchases the product. Persona can also be an initiator, i.e. subject to the idea of buying a service or product. The next roles are advisory, user, decision maker. Understanding these roles allows you to assign them to specific people. It should be noted that decision-makers are not always reached. Many brands in their person grid will have primarily advisors and initiators, this is not a bad thing, but you need to adapt the content to their needs and decision-making possibilities.
Is marketing persona needed in SEO?
Marketing persona are usually used by marketing and communication departments. Persons are also important for the sales department. However, little is said about the importance of marketing persona in the context of SEO. However, they are inseparably connected. The created personas facilitate the optimization of the website and its positioning in the search engine. A brand that has created people knows what products they are looking for, their priorities and how it works on the web. Thanks to this SEO activities are more targeted. They allow, for example, to choose a set of keywords for a given person and carry it through the entire purchasing process.
Marketing persona also help in working on Customer Journey Map. CJM is a customer journey map from the first contact with the brand / product to purchase. Knowing your persona, you can significantly reduce the route of travel, prevent chaos, maximize positive experiences. Thanks to this, the company does not burn the budget and runs tailored SEO campaigns.
Let us also remember that marketing persona are increasingly important for the website’s UX and its readability and functionality. As every SEO knows well, this translates into search engine results. Many companies decide to create websites, or landing page dedicated to specific people. Their appearance is tailored to the needs, preferences and expectations of the perfect customer.
Marketing persona are one of the most important elements of each brand’s advertising and content strategy. They can also help in SEO. Thanks to her, one knows how, to whom and what to talk about. The process of creating persona is not a day or two. You have to get to know your perfect customer. Determining your age, gender and place of residence will not make him your friend. And he should be. The better and more accurately you meet the marketing person, the more useful it will be in building communication, marketing and SEO strategies.
Target group in SEO according to GSC
If you look at GSC (Google Search Console) then you won’t find information
about target groups there, which you can specify by e.g. age but you can read a
lot from the keywords that appear there:
–
price cuts – this is already a clue that you can use to expand the site with
additional subpages or content. The target group determined by the prism of
price shapes your pricing policy and also indicates whether a given group of
words will benefit you or not (because you may not sell this assortment up to $
20 but you will still start). At the same time, on this basis, you can specify
the target group in terms of income (or at least try).
– questions – they prove the nature of the
information sought and constitute the basis for building answers. For example,
if someone types in “how to examine the competition’s keywords,” we
can assume that it is either a seo or the owner of a new business. So why not
answer this question with a solution scheme and an additional incentive to buy
my service?
– “how to teach a dog to bark” – here
you can also do a lot in terms of building content and handling specific target
groups
– it may happen, however, that the target group is
not the same as the typed phrase – for example, “online printing
house”. If the customer is indeed a printing house but only supports the
B2B market, then it is worth clearly saying to such a customer that yes, he has
a lot of traffic, but there are no customers there, because this is the B2C
market and in organic results this group of customers is the overwhelming
majority. That is why it is worth considering whether we really want to push
ourselves – our customer.
– devices – in GSC we have the ability to verify
group traffic according to the type of device used. Thanks to this, we know
whether the target group are passionate computer players or mobiles people (e.g.
tourists).
