8. Do I Really Need a Persona?

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Marketing in Focus

Business


One of the best tricks of the copywriting trade I’ve learned is that the more you understand your audience, the easier copywriting is. When you know what their day looks like, what their dreams and challenges are, and even how they talk, it’s a lot easier to be a better, more relatable copywriter. You’ve likely heard about the need to create an ideal customer avatar, persona or a profile.  If you haven’t heard those terms before, it simply means creating a profile of your target audience as if it were one person; the exact person you’re looking to serve. They often include demographics like age, gender and occupation, and then dig deeper into things like favorite book, whether they like coffee or tea, and celebrities they follow. Personas can be a super helpful way to keep your content consistent and help you connect with your target audience.  You may need a persona for each offering. The persona may not change too dramatically and that’s ok. You just want to be sure you’re understanding that target person that you know you can help so you can meet them where they’re at. You can document this in a Google doc, a notebook, a giant post-in note for the wall in your office; whatever makes sense for you. You’ll want it accessible anytime you’re creating a content calendar or content itself. You also may want it shareable if you’re working with a team. If you're like me and like a good worksheet, I've got you covered! Download it here: www.kristin-miller.com/persona. Section 1: Demographics Age Gender Occupation Geographic location Anything else that helps with digital ad targeting  Section 2: Related to Your Product/Service If you’re selling a course on how to be a better blogger, you’ll want to document how long they’ve been blogging, what platform they use and their revenue streams. If you’re service is virtual fitness coaching, you’ll likely want to document where they are in their fitness journey, how often they exercise currently and what their fitness goals may be.  You’ll also want to document challenges, or hurdles, that could get in the way of what you’re offering. Are they short on time? Are they on a fixed income? Including the specific words and phrases your target audience uses is helpful as well.  When you need to write content about where your audience is today, and create content to overcome objections, these pieces will come in handy. Documenting them ensures you’ll be consistent.  Section 3: Lifestyle Whatever items you want to document that make the audience real and can work into your content and digital ads.  This is where favorite books, mentors, how they take their coffee, and what they love to do in their spare time goes. Not only can you reference it in copy, like the email subject “better than a mochaccino” or digital ads. Did you know you can target people on Facebook based on pages they like?  Yep, you can. So knowing a favorite author can help target your ads to just the right audience. Make it fun! If your business is new, don’t stress about it. It’s ok to take guesses. It’s ok to get things wrong and modify them later after you know more about your target audience.  And because I know it can feel daunting to start at a blank page I’ve got a downloadable pdf with prompts to help you get started. Go to www.kristin-miller.com/persona to grab it.