Audience personas are the keystone of all of your marketing efforts. If you don’t know who your audience is, then you can’t expect to convince people to buy from you or subscribe to you.

You need to pinpoint who they are, what they need, and how you can serve them. Today we’re going to help you start creating your persona(s).

Pro Tip: Don’t be surprised if you have more than one audience persona. Most businesses are targeting multiple audiences with different needs. Make sure to create a persona for each type of audience!

 

How to Start Building Your Audience Persona

Begin with Market Research

You may be tempted to skip the research part, but don’t do it! This is one of the most critical steps if you want to create a persona that genuinely represents your audience.

There are a few ways to research your audience. Here are our top three methods:

Start by checking your analytics on your website and social media. Google, Facebook, Disqus and Instagram analytics can give you great insights into your audience.This data can provide valuable information on where your audience is coming from, their demographics, and what content they found engaging.

The second is to send out surveys to your current audience. You can create a simple survey in SurveyMonkey or Typeform. Send it out to your email list and ask them to fill out.

Pro tip: Gift card or discount incentives are a great way to boost completion rates!

Our final method is to look internally. If you have a big enough team, you can ask your customer service team or any client-facing employees about their interactions with your audience. What are some common questions or problems that occur? No one spends as much time with the audience as they do, so they are a great source of information.

 

Create Their Profile

Once you’ve gathered data, you can create a persona. Your audience persona can cover the following topics:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Salary
  • Location
  • Level of Education
  • Family Size
  • Job Title
  • Job Responsibilities
  • Level of Digital Competency
  • Hobbies
  • Preferred News Sources
  • Most Used Social Media Platforms
  • What Are Their Values?
  • What Are Their Main Goals?
  • How Can You Help Them Achieve Their Main Goals?

 

How to Use Audience Personas

One of the tricks of effective marketing is to create messaging that speaks directly to your audience. Imagine yourself as the audience persona and ask yourself how your company can help this person.

This tactic will lead you to create a marketing campaign where the persona feels understood and more likely to trust you.

 

Real-Life Example of Audience Persona

SLAM Online knows a lot about its audience persona. Let’s take a look at their demographics:

  • The age range is 15-25 years old
  • Readers are the ultimate basketball fans
  • Located all over the world

So how does this information help them grow their brand?

They create content on the latest basketball news in a way that appeals to their age group - informative yet irreverent. Their content keeps its audience engaged and ensured that they are getting the most up-to-date news in the basketball world.

They also know what NOT to create. SLAM Online's audience only care about basketball, so news about baseball or volleyball leagues miss the mark.

 

Wrap Up

Creating audience personas is a non-negotiable aspect of your business. You are only going to succeed if you know exactly what they need and how you can serve them. In marketing, it’s always about the audience.

Did you learn something new today? We would love it if you shared your thoughts in the comments!