A persona is a representation of an ideal customer, based on real data and some consistent assumptions about their socio-demographic characteristics, attitudes, motivations and goals.
Identifying your personas should be the starting point of your inbound marketing approach.
Indeed, you need to know your targets in order to create content that will respond to their problems at each stage of the buying cycle.
Be careful not to multiply the number of personas, as this can cause difficulties:
The appropriation of these personas by your marketing team;
Producing quality content (1 persona = at least 3 "white paper" type contents, so imagine 10 personas...);
Prioritisation of your marketing actions;
Sleep: start with simple things. Moreover, it is rare that a company addresses 15 completely different types of customers.
The three steps to follow to create your personas:
1. Identify the questions to ask
To help you, download our Plezi kit for creating your personas.
2. Determine how to research and answer these questions
Conduct interviews with your customers and staff;
Conduct a survey;
Look at comments on blogs in your sector;
Inspect LinkedIn profiles;
Or ask questions on social networks.
3. Compile all the information you gather
Be careful to :
Focus on motivation rather than attitude;
Don't talk about one or two people, but about those who make up the persona;
Don't base yourself on information that is too old;
Create your negative persona: this is a representation of the person you do not want as a customer. It will save you time and money in the long run as you will not spend time trying to sell your product or service to them.
Tips & Tricks!
Be "ruthless" with your personas: if you are missing information about a persona, delete it.