The persona in marketing´s world

If you are one of those who like definitions to understand some concept, the internet is full of them when the subject is persona. Even so, you surely know those pragmatic concepts won’t take you anywhere whether you’re a marketing professional, a student, or even an entrepreneur.

After all, what we see the most is the use of strategies, tactics, and decision making based on subjective criteria and sometimes even absurdities such as, for instance, “everybody does”, “has to have” and so on.

The great point here is to understand in fact what it is, what it is for, how to use it, and most important of all: why to use it. This is perhaps the most important characteristic of a true marketing professional, the capacity of explaining in a clear, concise, and objective way the why of actions.

Chuck, Cynthia, and Rob, Cooper’s first personas

Before the personas themselves, several studies of researchers such as Angus Jenkinson and Michael Jacobs already tried to understand the different segmentations in the market based on preferences and habits. However, it is important to mention that the use of personas actually starts in the software development market, in the already distant year of 1995 and is attributed to the software designer Alan Cooper. In 1997, advertising agency Ogilvy already used the concept and described it this way:

“Each strong brand has a group of people who share an affinity with the brand values. This universe is typically divided into several different subgroups within which there are equal or very similar purchasing behaviors and whose personality and characteristics in relation to the brand (product or service) can be understood in terms of common values, attitudes and assumptions”.

Everything happens from the point of view of the interaction between users and the product or service, in this specific case a software. The concept of using ideal archetypes to project ideal users was widely spread throughout the world and consisted basically of mixing characteristic behaviors and needs of individuals and communities with their affinities to the values of the brand in question.

Thus were born Chuck, Cynthia, and Rob, the first characters developed by Cooper to present three different user profiles. An interesting approach from part of this story, on how to build personas and assign names to them you can read here and you’ll see that this process came from the need to make the approach to different groups of people more palpable and projectable.

Invest in the quality of your user experience

If you want to go a bit further, I recommend the book “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” written by Alan Cooper in 1999, which from that time questioned whether the software market really prioritized improving the user experience, now so in vogue, or just trying to influence him to use the novelties provided by its genius programmers.
In my opinion, this remains an excellent question, whatever the market in question. After all, making the user experience fascinating should be the real goal of the whole company. The genial David Ogilvy, perhaps one of the best advertisers in history and owner of a huge amount of excellent quotes, defined how this relationship should be:

“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know that you shouldn’t bother people to buy your product but to you need to generate interest for them to buy it.
- David Ogilvy

Ideal Customer, Buyer Persona, and Target Audience

The error in understanding the above terms can be crucial to your marketing strategy. The pride and arrogance of thinking that we have the domain over these three different segmentations lead us to forget the obvious: the market is dynamic and will swallow our strategy if it is static.

Target Audience

Thus, we know that the target audience is where you will direct your marketing and sales actions. It is the one that you aim to reach and that you understand that will be your clients. It is a stratification of a group that has similar demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral characteristics.

Ideal Consumer

Your ideal consumer (Ideal Customer Profile- ICP) is so-called because it has the consistency of purchase, understanding of the product and engagement and has its needs completely met and/or indicates your product or service in a natural and spontaneous for other prospects.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona, in practice, does not exist. Yes, it is a creation made to reach the ideal customer. Demographic and behavioral characteristics are also listed, but beside them are placed frustrations, buying habits, who or what influences them in the purchasing decision process, lifestyle among others.

Build personas but aim at real people

In a deep analysis, we could say that it does not actually exist since it is the result of the average of all this data collected. The fact that it is fictitious does not diminish its importance in the process. It should be used as a starting point to direct its content and thus reaching its potential consumers in the real world.

It will be determinant, for example, to choose the tone of your company’s voice, the type and format of the content ideal to be produced, keywords to be used, and an indication of social networks where you should be present if you wish to be found.

Your points of contact or touch-points with this person are determinant for the achievement of your goals. But remember that it is not the number of touchpoints that will determine the success of your strategy, but their effectiveness.

As I wrote in the article Content Marketing is for Selling? the most important and beautiful thing in building up your content marketing is to make it reach your audience at the moment it needs it most. A good solution is the one for an existing problem, isn’t it?

Conclusion

Building persona is a fundamental step in your marketing content dissemination strategy and with that, even some more skeptics agree.

However, any marketing strategy that relies on absolute truths is doomed to failure. Personas are part of a process that has several other phases and stages. The characteristics of their market will always determine what needs to be done to succeed.

And there is someone close to you who is well aware of that. He attends by the name of “competitor”. Understanding that the process is dynamic you will adopt the habit to monitor all market movements. This will be a fundamental step to keep your head out of the water and be ready to quickly react

And precisely competition will be the theme of the next article. If you have come this far, thank you for your visit and reading and I would appreciate it if you leave your opinion or comment on the article or if you prefer your personal approach on the subject. See you next time.