Creating Personas - Building a Digital Marketing Strategy

 Customer Analysis 

Knowing your customers is the most important aspect of a digital marketing strategy. There is a saying, “A strategy is only as good as its execution”, so why do most strategies fail to execute? I think a strategy is only as good as the research put in. Collecting as much data as possible from existing users/customers of a brand, via surveys, google analytics, feedback forms, interviews with brand advocates etc. is needed before creating a Customer Persona. [1]

What is it?
A Persona is presented as an individual person that represents a group of people with similar attitudes, goals and behaviours. Personas are created to help understand your target audience.

Example of a Persona via Hubspot.com [3]

Why is it Important?
It's critically important to create personas to deliver a tailored strategy, with relevant content that will connect with your target audience in a meaningful way. Personas help to navigate future decisions to meet their needs, motiviations, desires and expectations. [2]

There are two types of personas, Marketing and UX personas. This video via PlaybookUX outlines the two and gets into deatil about UX (User Experience) Persona and Empathy maps. [2]

How to create a Customer Persona
There are many websites that make it easy to create these personas using templates
• HubSpot https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona. [3]
• Buffer https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide [4]
I highly recommend checking out the Buffer's Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas + Free Templates for further info on the what, why, and how to.


Sources

[4] Aaron Beashel. (Oct 27, 2019. Last updated Apr 10, 2020). The Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas + Free Templates. Available: https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide. Last accessed 4/5/2020. 

[3] Hubspot. (2020). Make My Persona. Available: https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona. Last accessed 4/5/2020

[5] Naomi Kendal. (2020). Intro to Strategy. Last accessed 5/5/2020

[2] PlayBookUX. (2019). Creating Personas for User Experience Research. Available: Creating Personas for User Experience Research. Last accessed 3rd May 2020.

[1] Strategos. (October 2, 2014). Why Strategies fail.. Available: https://strataegos.com/why-strategies-fail/ . Last accessed 4/5/2020.