Email marketing: what it is and how to implement it

how to build a marketing persona

 

Understanding user aspirations and frustrations

It is no exaggeration to say that all marketing strategies start with the user. However, users as defined in marketing often only consider demographic factors. Does it feel like you are only looking at users as objects of sale? Today, I will post about how to build a persona, which is a way to understand users in a more in-depth way.

1. What is a persona defined in marketing?

• - Set a 'virtual person' with a specific personality that can represent the brand image

• - If targeting before persona setting only considers demographic factors such as gender, age, and occupation, persona-based targeting enables three-dimensional targeting based on consumption information, behavioral patterns, values, etc.

• - Define customer aspirations and frustrations

• - Define the problems that the company can solve among customer difficulties

• -Developing services that help customers realize their aspirations and resolve their frustrations, and deliver key messages in marketing

What do you think is the difference between a robot and a human? Mara thinks of 'ambition' and 'lack'. Robots are unable to be self-aware of their own deficiencies and therefore have little ambition. On the other hand, humans are constantly aware of their shortcomings and strive to make up for them. And the customers we want to market to each have their own ambitions and needs. Let me refine this a bit and describe it as aspiration and frustration.

It is the role of the persona in marketing to unite people with these similar aspirations and setbacks and convey the message, 'We can solve your problem.' It is also the responsibility of marketing to classify concentrations within a group and determine the top percentage of our core customers' aspirations and frustrations.  

2. How can personas be used?

Persona helps you to understand users three-dimensionally rather than for fragmentary targeting purposes. We approach it as a human being with aspirations and frustrations, rather than something to sell services to. With personas, you can understand the context of what, when, and how users need it. A properly set persona can be used in various marketing plans and strategies, from the brand tone and manners to marketing channel mix strategy, targeting element definition, message copy setting, SEO strategy, and more.

Best of all, a well-established persona provides direction for all members. Even within a company, each member's image of a customer may be slightly different. Accordingly, if each person makes slightly different decisions according to their persona, it will be difficult to come up with a solid product.

 When making a decision, ask yourself, 'What choice will we make if it is our service persona?' Ask a question. She will be able to establish more consistent marketing, development, design, and strategy by examining which decision-making gives consistency when considering her and her usual behavior, lifestyle, and consumption behavior.

3. How to Define a Persona

User research

We recommend that you seek help from a professional user research team in this area. In fact, users do not even know what kind of desire they have, or they lie. Therefore, the competence of user research experts is important. However, if you don't have the expertise or lack the time and capital, you have no choice but to do it yourself in marketing.

List up the information you need for marketing and reverse the questions to get answers. When writing the questionnaire, you can make the question more concrete by writing down the expected answer to a certain extent and drawing the action item accordingly. For example, you can ask what YouTube channels users subscribe to frequently and find commonalities in the content of those channels to understand users' interests.

Persona Template

Once you've gathered information about your persona, use the persona template to organize it. It is a template that helps the understanding of the persona by visually composing images that can represent the persona and information such as the brand, technology affinity, and personality that the persona likes. It also helps you maintain consistency in your decision-making by taking it out whenever you need to make a decision.        

 

how to build a marketing persona

4. Transform your persona into a marketing language   

Persona is defined in terms of values ​​and lifestyles that are somewhat difficult to quantify, so it needs to be converted into a marketing language to be used in marketing.

Establish a marketing channel mix strategy

You can think about which media channels your target user's persona uses the most and devise a mixed strategy. For example, if you are older, you can consider offline channels or commercial TV commercials. For simple repetitive work workers or housewives, the radio may be a good medium to access information only by hearing. Conversely, if your target users are young and proficient in using social media, you can configure YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok in appropriate proportions to see the performance and adjust the mix weight.

Defining Targeting Elements

Unlike traditional media in the past, in digital media, advertisers can designate the target audience for advertisement exposure. This is called 'targeting' in marketing. We need to check the possible targeting factors in the medium and find the ones that can target our persona. From basic population targeting such as gender, age, region, etc. to interests and keywords, if you keep your persona in mind, you can apply targeting elements more accurately and easily.

Targeting Tips

• - Apps that only target users are installing are great for targeting app installs. If you want to target female users, it's like targeting menstrual calendar app installers.

• - It's also a good way to find out what content your target users will enjoy. Content is an area that intuitively reflects the user's lifestyle. Check the influencers that target users follow on social media, YouTube subscription channels, Netflix, music playlists, magazines, etc.

Brand tone & manner setting

The tone and manner of the brand are the tones of voice. For example, when delivering the message 'Let's practice social distancing to overcome Corona', the tone & manners delivered by President Moon Jae-in and Zico are completely different, right? When deciding on brand tone & manners, you can put seriousness and friendliness at both ends of the scale and consider your persona.

 When you think about the aspirations and frustrations of your service target users, it's easy to decide whether you want to be serious or friendly. Approaching small business owners who are suffering from Corona right now with a casual tone and manner that seems to play a prank will backfire. On the other hand, if you take yourself too seriously to high-spirited college students in their early 20s, they won't even listen to the message.

Message

Messages are intuitive sentences, images, or videos that convey how our service views users' problems and how to solve them. Create a message that stimulates your persona's aspirations and heals your frustrations. The derived message is expressed as an image, video, or card news suitable for the advertising channel.  

Today, I posted about how to build a persona that can deeply understand users.

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