In the world of marketing, buzzwords and phrases are common, but some represent important tools. Marketing personas are one example.  

Creating personas is an excellent tool to better understand your audience and stakeholders, which is increasingly important for effective marketing and communication. Personas aren’t about making presumptions about who your target audience is – it’s about using insightful and comprehensive data to develop a detailed picture.

Marketing strategist Ardath Albee provides a succinct definition of a marketing persona, defining it as “a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience.”

So why do we need marketing personas?

Developing marketing personas provides a deeper understanding of your target audience or stakeholder groups, their pain points, motivations and preferences. This data-based information can be used to:

• develop effective and thoughtful marketing strategies

• tailor marketing and communication material for the specific audience

• identify the best ways to reach your audience i.e. traditional media, social media, community forums etc.

• best utilise your budget

• position your business to meet the needs of its target audience.

Personas also provide important insights about your stakeholders to help inform engagement plans and effective access points to stakeholders.

Understanding the knowledge and information of an audience segment or group of stakeholders can significantly impact the way a message is shared, or a product or service is marketed and received by the target audience. For example, in the renewables industry, a new renewables project in the Northern Territory involves a complex web of stakeholders who will all have individual values and needs. It's crucial to understand these nuances and tailor your communication efforts accordingly. For instance, if you need to target a group of landowners in remote Northern Territory, using a national media outlet to communicate your message might be less effective than using a local notice board in a community store or utilising existing local networks.

And how do you develop comprehensive and effective marketing personas?

Personas are more than just a portrait and words on a page, but detailed profiles informed by a range of data inputs. Information such as demographic data, online analytics, customer feedback, online polls, response rates, revenue information, behaviour patterns and social media use should all be considered. The quality of the personas depends on the available qualitative and quantitative data – and you can develop and refine your personas as you learn more about your audience.

We encourage you to adopt marketing personas as part of your next marketing or communication strategy to better understand your audience’s unique needs and preferences and strategically position your business or project.

For more information, ask our team by calling (08) 8981 6445.