Brand personas are commonly used in customer journey mapping, but are generally helpful in most aspects of marketing strategy development. This is because a brand persona – which is a representation of the typical customer in a target market – helps the firm more clearly understand the consumer.
Generally firms will develop multiple brand personas – one brand persona for each of their target markets. This way they can have a quick summary view of all their target markets when making key marketing decisions.
Reasons to Use a Brand Persona
Why use a brand persona? There are several benefits including:
- It is an easy and simple way to quickly refer to the target market
- It becomes a checkpoint for the development and assessment of new marketing initiatives
- It keeps the key target markets top-of-mind within the organization
- It forces the firm to fully describe the target market across a range of lifestyle factors and purchase behaviors
- The firm needs to clearly differentiate between different target markets and describe them uniquely
- It allows easy communication of the target market to sales and service staff, as part of the internal marketing process
- It enables clear communication of the target market to senior management
- All staff in the organization will know and understand the key target market
- Subtle differences between different target markets will become better understood
- The firm will work towards an increasingly better understanding of its targets (brand personas)
How to Use a Brand Persona
For a brand persona to be useful, they must almost “come alive” inside the organization and its marketing decision making process. For example, various marketing reports inside the firm should use and refer to the brand persona when discussing strategies designed for the target market.
At marketing meetings, the staff should refer to the brand persona – such as, “Is this a good product for Mitchell?” or “Is this how Kristi likes to be communicated to?”
As staff training sessions – particularly for sales and service staff – the target market should be talked about in terms of their bran
This active approach to incorporating the brand persona into key decisions, internal communication, and marketing strategy development will ensure that the precise needs of a target market are always understood and incorporated.
Related Topics
When to Use Customer Journey Mapping
