Personas and the power of audience insight

At Dashboard, we always highlight to our clients the power of audience insights and understanding. We note that it’s very important to listen to your customers (vs just talking to them). We also advocate for these insights to be turned in action. There are a good number of organizations out there that don’t reach out and connect with their customers. They’re missing out on a myriad of market intelligence that could make small and big shifts. Shifts that impact sales, product development, retention rates, employee happiness and brand loyalty.   
 
Any good marketer or business textbook will tell you that understanding your target audience is essential for a successful marketing strategy. Audience understanding is one of 3 pillars in the marketing strategies we develop for our clients. What’s important to note is that traditional audience segmentation can only provide so much to an organization. Going deeper and more personal will take an organization’s marketing efforts to a whole new level of effectiveness.
 
Audience Segments vs. Buyer Personas… what’s the difference?
 
Audience segmentation involves categorizing your audience based on demographic, geographic, psychographic, or behavioral data. It’s a broad definition of groups of people who might be interested in your product or service. Buyer personas are detailed, personal, semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. They go beyond demographics, diving deep into motivations, pain points, behaviors, goals, aspirations, and feelings.
 
If you want to see how defining a buyer segment can only take you so far, take a look at how one 'segment' can be very quickly split into two very different personas. :) 

Here’s a quick list of benefits around why an organization should develop Buyer Personas:

1. Effective Targeting: Having some level of deeper understanding will enable you to effectively and meaningfully target specific individuals within your audience segments. This focus and understanding allows you to tailor your messaging, content, and offerings to resonate deeply with each persona's needs and wants.
2. Content Relevance: By understanding what challenges, concerns, desires, etc. your personas face and what solutions they seek, you can create valuable and sticky content that speaks directly to them. This relevance increases engagement, builds brand trust, and drives conversions.
3. Product or Service Development: Deeper understanding drives ongoing refinement of a product or service. Connecting features, offers, pricing, functionality, timing, channels, etc. with what your ideal customers value most, will see ongoing improvements and ensures relevancy.
4. Problem Resolution: Gaining input and understanding around pain points and behaviours could prevent issues from happening. The more you know, the more you can predict, resolve and react to. This insight can help prevent or resolve a potential problem well before it becomes one.
5. Powerful Creative: There is so much noise in the market. The deeper you understand your ‘buyer’ the more effective and relevant your creative can be. Human insights and emotional triggers can be powerful. Connecting creative to those will ensure they act.
6. Improved Results: Connecting with the right person, through the right channel, with the right message will deliver results. The more you know and appreciate, the more impactful your marketing will be. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, the key is to focus on activities that have the greatest impact on your personas.
7. Increased Satisfaction: Understanding and addressing specific needs leads to happier customers who feel valued and appreciated. This satisfaction fosters brand loyalty and advocacy, driving long-term recurring business growth. 

​Over the last few months, the team at Dashboard have developed a number of marketing strategies that showcase detailed buyer personas. Some were created based on 1:1 customer interviews and 1st party research, while others were supported by 3rd party research and the client’s ‘gut’. While you want to ensure any persona is based on human insight and behavioural data, you need to start somewhere. Therefore, you can always establish a foundation and continually expand and refine it.
 
As with websites, buyer personas are never done. Markets evolve, consumer behaviors change, new trends emerge and even pandemics derail human and business engagement. Because of that, it’s very important to regularly review and update your personas and ensure that your engagement strategies remain relevant and effective. Here's how to keep your personas dynamic:

1. Continuous Research: Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to gather insights about your audience's evolving preferences, pain points, and behaviors. This could be quarterly 1:1 interviews with 10-14 customers, posing a quick poll on social media, or including an online survey in a monthly email newsletter.
2. Utilize Multiple Sources: Don't rely solely on surveys or interviews. Incorporate data from sales, Google Analytics, social media analytics, customer success interactions, and feedback from any other front-line staff. Pulling from data sources you control, and have easy access to, paints a comprehensive picture of your personas.
3. Engage Your Team: Your sales, marketing, and customer success teams interact directly with customers. Continually tap into their knowledge and experiences to refine your personas and align internal strategies and approaches with customer expectations and demands.

 
Audience understanding and persona development should be a key part of any marketing strategy. As outlined, digging deep goes beyond surface-level segmentation, and will in-turn provide actionable insights that drive effective marketing – both from an acquisition and retention point-of-view. By creating a list of buyer personas, and then continuously refining them based on real-time data and insights, ensures that you stay relevant, connected to your customers, and delivering results.