How To Create A Content Marketing Persona

Content marketing is based on a relationship between two parties: the party that delivers the content and the one receiving it . As the side that creates and delivers the content, our aim is to develop and deepen this relationship. To achieve that goal, we need to define exactly who we are talking to. When we know this persona well, we know what to say, what interests them,  when and where to communicate, what media to use, and what kind of digital tools to utilize.

The question is how does one build a marketing persona??

To build a content marketing persona, you need a deep understanding of human behavior and the personality of your target audience.  You also need numbers.

Stage 1: Create The First Impression
The first stage in building this persona is by zooming in on your target audience. This stage is likely to be based on simple demographic data you should already have from marketing surveys and research, parameters such as:

• Age

• Gender

• Location: city, town, suburb.

• Profession

• Income

Those basic facts alone will give you a good idea as to who is  your ideal customer. You’ll know where he lives, what she does, how old he is and how much cash she has at her disposable.

At this point, even though you may have a general idea of what your ideal customer looks like, keep in mind that looks can be deceptive. You need to dig deeper and give that initial persona solid  character.

Stage 2: Build The Personality
This is where things start to get more interesting. You want to go beyond surface appearances, to understand what makes your ideal customer tick. You want to move beyond what they do to how they do it and why they do it. Find out how they spend   their downtime, what they think about during their drive to work or while they’re sitting on the subway. What turns their head and captures their thoughts/

There are so many things to find out while creating  your content marketing personas, but to start with, you’ll want answers to these basic questions:

Personality-Oriented Questions:

1. What is your persona’s name?

2. What is your persona’s exact age?

3. What does your persona’s family look like?

4. Where does your persona work?

5. What’s your persona’s job title and career level?

6. What is your persona’s life and commercial habits?

7. What  is your persona’s  biggest life and career challenges?

8. What makes your persona happy?

9. What’s missing in your persona’s life?

10. What  does persona need, consciously and unconsciously?

11. What are your persona’s expectations, consciously and unconsciously?

Digital Behaviour Questions:

1. How much time do they spend online each day?

2. Which social media platforms do they use, what do they post, follow and engage with?

3. Which media sources do they rely on for information?

4. How do they like to communicate? Email? Social media? Telephone?

Questions Related To Your Brand/Product/Service Experience:

1. How have they experienced your brand/product/services so far?

2. What needs does your brand/product /service meet?

3. What are the expectations of this persona from you?

4. what improvements would they like to see?

Answering those questions won’t be simple or linear, there is a possibility that  the information is scattered around in your organization. When creating a persona, you want to bring together and synergize all this precious information into one identity. The data should be gathered from all stakeholders;  the sales team, CRM and CMS, customer research and social media platforms.Many companies use focus groups and commission surveys.

You will often find out there is  more than one persona because you are likely to have more than one kind of customer.

The result, though, should be enough information to understand not just what a customer persona looks like but what he or she says, how they behave, how they speak and what they think so we can be effective in communicating with them regularly.

Stage 3: Meet Your Persona
Once you complete the first two stages, you will have a customer persona that’s as true to life as the next customer to walk through the door.. Next, you’ll have to breathe life into it.

You do that by simply communicating with it, by engaging it. By creating the kind of content that you now know they want to see then observe the reaction.

Because of your deep understanding of your persona(s),the content will present itself more easily and consistently. It will address the needs you identified, speak it in their language, and  appeal directly to their psyche, feeling authentic and relevant.If you’ve created an accurate customer persona, you should find that your content is read or watched, commented on and shared. You’ll have that second party with which you can develop and deepen a real, trustworthy and ongoing relationship. In other words, the ultimate customer engagement experience.

If you have any questions or want to meet your brand’s persona, just drop us a line at contact@astelo.com.

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