User Personas vs. User Profiles
One of the initial steps in developing a marketing strategy is to create a full profile of your target market. Identifying the segment of customers who will purchase your product or service is an important aspect to business strategy. As you define your core target market, begin compiling information about who they are, how they shop, where they share information, etc. This information will help you develop a user persona and profile.
Defining your target market is one of the early steps to understanding your customer base. In order to create marketing campaigns that speak directly to your segmented audiences, the user persona and user profile will be extremely helpful.
For example, a crystal glassware company produces unique crystal drinkware sets. Before debuting their products, they identified in-home party hosts and newlyweds as their preferred target market. As they continued to segment their market, they found that women age 25 – 40 in major metropolitan cities was their target market. Now, they want to create a user persona for both customer segments.
A User Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your user base that combines market research with real data to develop a description of an ideal customer. Personas help you understand WHY a user would want to interact with your brand. The Persona allows you to develop targeted messaging and understand the motivations of your user segments.
In the example shared above, the crystal glassware company would think through why an in-home party host who is a female between the age of 25-40 would want to purchase their product. They would think through a day in her life. She may be single, dating, or married, but she enjoys having friends and family over for brunch or dinner parties. She’s grown up on the likes of entertainment mavens such as Martha Stewart and loves creating beautiful centerpieces. Again, user personas help identify a customers’ WHY. So why would this customer want to purchase. So within this segment’s User Persona, some factors that would be captured would include:
Enjoys hosting parties in her home
Interested in creating unique table scapes and centerpieces
Likes to have the latest kitchen gadgets
Self-proclaimed bartender
Moderately fancy and keeps knick-knacks from worldwide travels
Enjoys purchasing unique dinner sets for specific purposes (i.e. salad bowls, gravy bowls, dessert plates, etc.)
This customer would appreciate this crystal glassware because it will help her maintain her dining set collection as well as the status, she has developed of being her group’s Martha Stewart. These things are important to her and her lifestyle and so the crystal glassware company can address this in their marketing messaging to speak directly to her.
Now, the next step is the User Profile. The User Profile is based on real data that has been captured, analyzed, and serves as a representation of your users. The data collected is descriptive of their demographics (i.e. geographical location, academic, professional background) as well as their psychographics (i.e. interests, hobbies, memberships in groups, etc.). The User Profile helps you understand HOW your users interact with your brand. The Profile allows you to develop target market campaigns to increase users and sales conversions while also helping you to understand the behaviors of your user segments.
To keep with the same example, the crystal glassware company would consider what platforms their customer use regularly such as Instagram and Facebook. They would identify which magazines she reads such as Vogue and where she goes for advice and ideas such as Pinterest. These will help them define where they should purchase advertisements to ensure they capture her when she is considering new products. They would also consider stores she shops in regularly and work hard to be placed on the shelves of these retailers whether it is Bloomingdales, Target, Macy’s or Bed Bath & Beyond. Understanding where your potential customer goes to gather information helps focus a marketing strategy even further so you can reach your customer where they are and speak directly to them.
User Personas vs Profiles
User Personas and Profiles help define your customer base and give insight to how they want to interact with you.
Even if you are already in business, you can still go back and complete these exercises. If you are already in business, analyze the data from your social media or website traffic to create real-time data User Profiles. If you do not yet have sales, start with a User Persona and then develop your User Profile as you capture sales. Having both will help inform you of how to improve social media engagement, website traffic, and sales.