People in marketing generally know their business. They know what sells and who sells it to. At least, you would think that was the case. However, when you think about it, how do they get this data? How do they know what will sell each person? Are they mystical muses sent by the Roman gods? Can they predict the future? Do they have an innate ability to tune in to “what the people want”? No, that is not the case. While there are certainly some people who are extremely talented at figuring out what “people” are like, most of the time this data comes from extensive market research. However, why is this important to you? Are you an advertising executive at a major marketing firm? Odds are, no. Are you a business owner? Odds are, yes. That’s why it’s important to you! Although you may not “do” marketing for a living, you still need to know how to properly market your company/business without throwing caution and dollars to the wind.
How do we achieve this? We accomplished this by creating several marketing personas. What are marketing personas, you ask? Well, basically they are idealistic versions of each type of customer that would be interesting to buy your products/services. Every business has several people, whether they like to believe it or not. Your clients cannot be reduced to an ideal person. Rather, you need to be creative and understand that there are many reasons why someone would approach your business/company looking for a product/service. The first thing you should do is sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and brainstorm.
First, start writing down what each product/service you have to offer. Then, for each product/service, start asking yourself, “Who would buy this?” I will give you an example. Let’s say my business was a custom bakery. What is my product/service that people would buy? It would be easy to say that my product/service was “custom cakes”. Instead, why not break it down further? What types of custom cakes are there? Custom birthday cakes? Custom wedding cakes? Personalized anniversary cakes? Lots to choose from. You should write down every category of potential cake someone could buy. From there, I need to dig into the type of personality that would buy a specific category of cake. Let’s use “custom birthday cake” as an example. Who would buy a personalized birthday cake? The first thing that comes to mind is “father of little boy”. The next thing that comes to mind is “birthday party planner”. What else could it be? There are numerous possibilities. If I start pinpointing all the services/products I offer, I can figure out who all my marketing people are and what market share I’d like to give them and market to their needs. If, for example, I believe that parents of young children looking for personalized birthday cakes will make 80% of the profits from my business, then I’ll want to make sure that I wrap my marketing strategy primarily around that person.
Do you see why marketing personas are so important? Otherwise, you are blindly throwing money at anyone or anything that walks past you. Instead, be smart. Spend some time researching the different types of people you’d like to target, and THEN wrap your marketing strategy and money around those people to reap the benefits.
