This week we are going to talk about User Personas.
What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus. You’re watching Marketing Madness, the Blue Fish vlog!
Over the past couple of years, one of the things I have found when working with most business owners is that they do not have any idea who their target customer or client is. A user persona is just a fancy web industry way of saying you have defined many of the characteristics or demographics of your target client.
In other words, more than likely you cannot market your product or service to everyone so you need to spend the time defining who it is that you want to sell to.
When we build out user personas some of what we define is the following:
What is the person’s name? What do they look like? Are they male or female? Are they in a certain age range? Are they part of some minority group? What interests them? Do they make a certain amount of money? Where do they hang out online? Where do they hang out in the real world? Are they part of any organizations? Do they have any special skills or talents?
This list could go on and on but I think you get the idea. Defining the items above should happen before you even get started on things like branding or advertising. It shapes everything about the business.
Think of a clothing retailer. If I ask you who the target audience is for Brooks Brothers you probably conjure up images of someone that dresses fairly conservatively. They are going to be predominantly white and upper middle class. They could be male or female since Brooks Brothers caters to both. They are definitely someone that works in a professional environment. They care how they dress. They are probably 30-45 years in age and have incomes in excess of 100k.
Contrast that with Urban Outfitters. Urban Outfitters caters to a younger crowd. The age range is probably 15-25. They are ethnically diverse. They have an interest in fashion and music. They do not earn a lot of money. They like deals on clothing because they change their style frequently based on what is in at the time. They wear the clothing at Urban Outfitters to make a statement.
In defining their User Personas both of these companies have made decisions about their branding, the design of their stores, the products they sell, the price point they will sell them at, and more.
What they have also decided is how they will advertise to their target demographic. One of the things you will also realize if you go down this path is that social media platforms want all of this information as well. In order to get your ads in front of the right people, they want to know all of the above so they can hone in on your audience.
So if you are a business owner, take time to write down your user personas. You are not saying that you will not do business with people outside of that defined group. You are just giving yourself some guidelines by which to operate in both your branding, your brand experience, and your advertising.
Well, that’s a wrap for this week! I want to thank you for checking in. Make sure to hit that like button. And if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!