If you find it difficult to formulate a tone of voice or find consistency in your expressions because you don't quite know which target audience you are writing for, it can be helpful to create a persona. A persona is actually nothing more than a detailed characterization of a certain type of user.
Personas, then, bring your target audiences to life. And because a persona is nothing more than a fictional character who carries your company's attributes, including its values and traits, that persona can guide all the forms of communication you develop.
Personas (which can be partly related to archetypes) are very often used by companies to give a concrete character to the tone of voice and to increase recognition for the target audience. The characters that personas have are used by small and large companies to be able to map out the right customer journey for the customer.
A persona can also help with greater understanding of internal company culture. By using a recognizable persona, your staff will more quickly understand the identity of the company, and get a better sense of the (desired) company culture. A persona can also be a useful tool when briefing external parties, such as a copywriter or an advertising agency.
Build your persona
Personas, then, are fictional personalities, also called customer profiles. You can set them up by doing research on your target audiences. They give you insight into their needs, income, work situation, hobbies, challenges, the channels they use and they connect to your product, service and value proposition. They also help you discover for whom you will actually offer what product or service. Personas are also very important to discover for which generation you are actually going to set up your marketing and design.
Figure: Customer profiles at Albert Heijn
Do you live in Amsterdam, buy a lot of chilled vegetables, fresh cheese, luxury wines and organic produce? Then chances are you are among Albert Heijn's best customers. The 'City Premium' customer, new employees learn, is highly educated and lives mainly in the west of the Netherlands.
Albert Heijn knows 6 different personas and uses these profiles to better meet the needs of these specific customers. Their customer profiles also determine how the offer is distributed in the store.
For example, one of the other 6 personas is a "Modern family." They live anywhere in the Netherlands, have an above-average income and prefer to visit between 17:00 and 18:00. Furthermore, Albert Heijn also created profiles under the headings of "City Budget," "Premium," Traditional and Mainstream.
Figure: Customer profile of the premium customer at Albert Heijn
If you get started with custom profiles for your brand, provide your personas with a name, age, gender, their own unique personality, a job, a place of residence, hobbies, preferences and behaviors. Don't be too afraid to put an outspoken character here. Similarly, it may well be that your brand persona does not like something at all. Like people who throw trash next to the trash can, or bike against the wind, for example.
Send us a message
A persona helps you realistically put together the personality of your brand, provides a compelling and unified line in your external communications, and can even help you pick suitable personnel, or the search for ambassadors to support your brand. Also consider, for example, the actors for a commercial, the influencers you hire for an Instagram campaign, or the color of paint you choose for your business premises.
5 questions for creating a persona
If you are going to set up your own personas for your brand, make sure you at least get answers to the following 5 questions:
Who is the person 2.
It is important to make your persona as personal and specific as possible. The more information you know and describe about your persona, the more it comes to life. This information is also important when targeting a campaign.
Examples: gender, age, residence, income, religion, politics, hobbies, etc.
2. What are your personas' life goals, needs and desires?
As a brand, you want to respond to the wants and needs of your target audience. It is good to know what your target audience really wants, both on a small scale and on a large scale, e.g. ultimate life goal.
Examples: Taking a big trip with the whole family
What are your Personas' frustrations or fears 3.
Apart from wanting to know what your customer wants, it is just as important to know what this customer does not want. Knowing what your customer does not want, what scares or angers this person, prevents you from inadvertently scaring off your target audience instead of appealing to them.
Examples: not being able to use an ATM in Patagonia, malaria, fear of flying
4. What influences Personas?
It is good to know is who influences your persona. These influencers or mediums can support you in reaching or persuading your target audience. You can also learn from these persons or mediums. Why exactly is your customer influenced by them? You can act on the answer to this question.
Examples: NRC, travel books, travel agents, friends, children
5. What online behaviors do they exhibit?
The same applies to this question as the question of who influences your persona. If you know where your persona goes online, you can respond by being active on this channel as well. For channels you can't access yourself (competitor's site, for example), you can look at the underlying thoughts. Why does the persona visit this site? You can then respond to this by applying the found points yourself.
Examples: Facebook friends, Tripadvisor, E-mail, reviews, blogs, etc.
Visualizing your persona
There are several ways to visualize your persona. Here are a few examples:
About me
One way to visually represent your persona is to lay it out like a curriculum vitae. Through a picture you show what your persona looks like and through text and graphics you tell more about this person. The advantage of this way is that you can put a lot of substantive information into the visualization.
Text and image
By combining text and images, all the information of your persona is displayed well and quickly. An advantage of this visualization method is that you can fairly quickly understand who your persona is and what suits him or her. Through text, all the information, which fits the images, can be explained.
Moodboard
By putting together images that match your persona, you have super quick insight into your persona's life. The disadvantage of a textless design is that you cannot explain all the information well. However, such a mood board can help you well in finding the right tone to fit when designing a campaign, for example.
Bring your customer to life with persona
By knowing who your customers are, how they think and what challenges they are dealing with, you can do a better and more targeted job and address those aspects that are most important to your customers.
Want to learn more or need help creating your persona? Schedule an appointment to learn more about how we work or for a strategic session.
Send us a message
Were you inspired by this article? Make work of your online marketing.
Source: 
