Interview with Blair Ciecko, Director of Branding
User personas offer marketing teams insight into not only the goals and characteristics of a customer category but provide an opportunity to build empathy as they embark on a brand journey. Five im
portant things to consider as you create user personas:
Define customer types
Dig deep into each mindset
Reveal core lifestyle motivators
Prioritize the personas
Develop marketing messages to connect
Understanding the different customers and potential customers for any brand is powerful insight. With clearly-defined and carefully constructed user personas, the organization lays a foundation for communications and understanding. Segment customer types and outline opportunities to set the stage for brand relevance. Be sure to capture segments by titles, genders, ages, motivations, emotions, primary job responsibilities, etc. There are no minimum number of personas, each organization’s outputs depend on who your target audiences are.
Once you have established categories, spend time distilling each audience through interviews, observations and/or customer data. Primary and secondary research will help you dig deep into each type of customer to define their characteristics and traits. In creating user personas, each individual has a defining personality, wants, influences and other factors. The behavioral variables help to map their journey and identify trends important to brand connection. Understanding their motivations will assist in aspects from website architecture to media spend to brand value propositions.
Prioritizing the user personas can be the most difficult task of all. Ranking audience groups by importance ensures that budget allocations, message creation and marketing efforts are focused on the highest likelihood for conversion.
By creating a primary persona, we can target effective communications strategies and shape relevant messaging to this important audience while defining the mediums to deliver our message. Secondary messages delivered to supporting personas will help us engage with niche audiences and effectively speak to each group.
Ready to build a brand founded on user personas? Contact us to learn how Celtic Chicago can help you.
