Using Marketing Personas to Choose Winning Strategies and Tactics
In our last blog post, we talked about how to determine your audience and the importance of creating “personas” or fictional examples of your target audience to help give a face to who you’re trying to reach. Creating a persona may seem like an unnecessary step in the marketing process. But in actuality, a well-crafted persona can help you not only understand who your target audience is but also how they live their lives, make daily decisions and even how they consume media. This allows you to make strategic decisions about where to focus your marketing efforts.
I had a colleague once that expressed how silly they thought the concept of personas was and how they didn’t think it was helpful at all. To which, I started asking some very basic questions like, “What’s the average age of the audience? What is the percentage of gender male vs. female? What is the average household income? Where do they live?” These questions, my colleague could answer. Then I asked, “Does the audience prefer mobile ads or radio ads? Do they click on ads on Facebook more or Instagram more? What are the goals and aspirations of the audience? What makes them want to buy a product and stick with that brand? What is important to the audience?” These questions, they couldn’t answer. And it’s these deeper questions that get to the core of what makes a person tick, and every marketer can tell you that people respond more to emotional ties than intellectual ties. If you can get a person emotionally invested in your product or service, then they are more likely to purchase from you and either repeat their purchase or recommend others to do the same. Creating personas allows for that deeper analysis.
Step 1: Build In-Depth Marketing Personas
They are more than just basic demographic outlines - they are fully fleshed-out, semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. Each persona should offer insights into who they are, what they value and how they engage with the world.
When building your personas, consider these elements:
Demographics: Age, gender, location, income and education level. This is the basic level, but don’t stop here.
Psychographics: Interests, hobbies, personality traits, values and lifestyle choices.
Challenges and Goals: What problems are they trying to solve? What do they hope to achieve?
Pain Points: What frustrations or obstacles are they encountering that your product/service can help alleviate?
For example, let’s say you’re marketing a yoga app. You might create a persona like “Jane Austin” (a lot of marketers use alliterative names, but that’s a little corny for me). Jane is a 40-something-year-old working mom who prioritizes efficiency and convenience in her workouts. She values staying active but struggles to find time due to her busy schedule.
Step 2: Analyze Media Consumption
Once you have developed your personas, it’s time to dig into how they consume media to make buying decisions. This understanding will help you pinpoint where to focus your marketing strategies. It’s important to meet your audience where they are already active. So consider the following:
Preferred Platforms: Each persona will have distinct preferences when it comes to platforms. For example, younger personas may prefer TikTok and Instagram, while professionals might gravitate toward LinkedIn.
Content Preferences: Analyze the types of content they engage with. Do they prefer short-form video content, in-depth blog posts or visual platforms like Pinterest? Understanding whether they value entertainment, education or inspiration helps you craft the right messaging.
Device Usage: Are they browsing primarily on mobile devices or desktops? Are they on more traditional media like TV (now more connected TV, but still), radio, billboards because they’re commuting distances? This can influence whether you prioritize mobile-first strategies like social ads or radio ads.
Influencers and Communities: Many consumers trust recommendations from influencers or communities they belong to. Research which influencers your personas follow and engage with.
Our persona, Jane, loves to scroll on Instagram. She’s follows several yoga personalities that do short-form yoga examples that Jane likes to incorporate into her daily routines. She also has a decently active Facebook account that she uses to keep up with family and friends who live across the country.
Step 3: Choose the Best Marketing Strategies and Tactics
So, with a clear picture of your personas and their media habits, you can now select the right strategies and tactics to market your product/service.
To market our yoga app to Jane, we would consider a combination of sponsored reels on Instagram and Facebook that are both product based and partnerships with popular yoga influencers to give quick and fun examples of workouts that are available in the app. We’d also see if those influencers would help with content on the app itself with a special partnership.
Step 4: Optimize and Adjust
No marketing campaign should be static. Personas, environment and needs change all the time. As you monitor the performance of your marketing efforts, keep an eye on how your personas interact with the content and ads. Regularly revisit your personas and their media consumption patterns to ensure your strategy remains aligned with their habits, especially as new platforms and trends emerge. What worked six months ago may not be as effective today, so be ready to pivot based on real-time insights. I always recommend to reevaluate personas, tactics and trends annually at the absolute least. If you’re targeting younger personas, that evaluation may need to be every quarter.
Conclusion
By focusing on marketing personas and understanding how they consume media, you can choose strategies and tactics that hit the mark. Personas allow you to fine-tune not only your message but also how and where that message is delivered. With this approach, your marketing will feel more personal, relevant and ultimately more successful.
Persona-driven marketing isn’t just about reaching an audience - it’s about reaching the right audience in the right way, every time.
