Understanding your Audience: Creating an accurate user persona

Want more traffic, more sales, and more brand loyalty?

Of course, you do! Who wouldn’t?

The good news is that creating a more successful brand is simpler than you might think. It doesn’t involve plunging thousands of pounds (or of equivalent currency) into your marketing strategy or constantly upgrading your website.

Although a good content marketing strategy and a strong visual appeal can be beneficial, the ultimate way to gain customers today is to do one simple thing: understand your audience.

When you understand your audience, you can create marketing and branding campaigns that resonate with the people who matter most to you. That helps you to build “brand affinity”, which means that your customers will keep coming back, time and time again — regardless of what your competitors might be doing.

So, what do you need to do to understand your audience better?

Simple — just build a user persona.

Research indicates that user personas can make websites up to five times more effective for users while leading to 100% increase in page visits.

What are you waiting for?

The value of the visitor profile

A user persona, or “visitor profile”, is a research-backed interpretation of your perfect customer. They’re a Picasso painting of your ideal client, pieced together from data that you’ve gathered through social media campaigns, website behaviour, and various crucial metrics.

When you design a user persona, you create a template for who you want to sell to, that your entire business can use. This means that your sales, marketing, and promotion team all know exactly what kind of person you’re trying to attract, and what sort of voice they should use in response.

User personas give context to your inbound marketing strategies. They show you why you should choose one social media platform over another, or whether you should consider using a podcast alongside your blog posts. After all, everything that you do as a business should ultimately fit the needs and interests of your customers.

When you create a user persona, you can decide which personality you need to establish to make sure you resonate with your ideal audience, which communication platforms you should use, and which adaptations you should make to your product.

In simple terms, a user persona gives you a map to success.

The user persona template

So, how do you design a user persona?

Most companies start with a broad template. They’ll look at their industry as a whole, and who they think their product or service might appeal to based on their existing understanding of the market, a competitor analysis, and a few other sources of information.

The more your company grows, and the more you consequently learn about your customer base, the more information you’ll be able to add to your user persona. Over time, you can make the information as detailed as you like. In fact, some companies create entire backstories and histories for their buyer personas. Additionally, you might create new personas to attract different segments of your audience more effectively.

To get started, you’ll need the following information:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Relationship status
• Interests
• Favourite brands or websites
• Job title
• Educational level
• Income level
• Language
• Buying concerns
• Buying motivations

You might not have all the information you need when you first get started, but your understanding of your user personas will grow as your company evolves. To get a little more data, try reaching out to existing customers on social media, or through your email campaigns.

Creating your user personas

Once you’ve got the basic details of who you think you’re selling to, you’ll be able to start fleshing your personas out a little more. Here are five steps that can help you do just that:

Step 1: Give them a Name

It might seem like a pointless exercise, but giving your user persona a name helps them to feel more like a “real” person. If your user persona feels authentic, then it will be easier for you to step into their shoes, and consider things from their perspective.

Step 2: Position your persona

Think about where your persona exists in the world around you. Is he or she the executive at a big company, or are they just another person, trying to get by in a 9-to-5 job? Think about exactly who your persona is, and imagine them in a real environment.

Step 3: Build demographic data

Once you know where your persona exists in the world around you, build on their demographic information. You can get some great information for those through surveys, questionnaires, and Google Analytics. Find your user’s gender, their age, how much they earn, and even what they like to do online.

Step 4: Consider goals and challenges

When it comes to finding out more about your user persona’s goals, challenges, fears, and values, you’ll be best served talking to your existing customers. Ask them questions that will help you to learn more about what your clients expect from your brand.

Step 5: Create a marketing message

Finally, once you’re stocked up on all the information you could need about your ideal customers, you’ll need to start thinking about your marketing messages. Consider your user personas, and how can you create an online presence that resonates with their preferences and needs.

Building your own user personas

A great user persona is a fantastic resource for any growing brand.

After all, if you understand exactly who you need to sell to, then you can make sure that you take steps to identify with your audience and develop solutions that solve their problems effectively.

With user personas, you get customers that are more engaged and intrigued by your brand, while your customers get a company that seems to understand and respond to their needs — everybody wins.

The more you build on your user personas, the more benefits you’ll see in your business. After all, understanding your customers will help you to figure out how to direct your sales funnel, which marketing methods you should use, and how you should adapt your voice to the right people.

Just remember, your user personas aren’t static. The chances are that they’ll grow, evolve, and even split off into new people as your brand grows. The good news is that if you can stay on top of them, you’ll see great results.

Check out our guide to creating a user persona, complete with a free template to design your own personas from scratch. Here, you’ll learn where to find information about your ideal users, how to identify your ideal customer, and how to make sure your user personas deliver measurable ROI.

Your audience is crucial to your business. Don’t you think it’s time you get to know them?