Developing target personas in marketing

Here's an article which will be published in ROI-Q for the CW Allen Group next month:

If you are trying to develop a competitive edge and potentially save tens of thousands of dollars in marketing expenses, you need to discover and execute inbound marketing. I will drive into some of the key concepts and give you information on how to get started.

A major challenge for businesses today is a lack of understanding of their customers. You may know only what your online tracking reports or invoices tell you about your customers, and not the customers themselves. You need a way to overcome this disconnect. Remember, you’re not marketing to statistics, you’re marketing to people


Do market research

If you don’t know your customer and prospect base intimately, then you need to conduct some elementary market research. For about $10,000(depending upon the complexity of the questionnaire) you can get very rich data about what your customers think and what they want from you. In addition, make sure that you ask them how they like to receive content and what social media vehicles they use(LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc) as this will be key on how you decide to deliver content and value.


Bet on target personas

Let’s assume you are already executing an inbound marketing plan. Whether you are planning a search engine based, a pay per click or a content and link strategy it’s always best to know who you are targeting before implementing any of your campaign or strategy. But how do you know who you are targeting and how to target them?


Developing your target personas

A target persona is a model of an ideal customer which incorporates primary research and data, such as income and gender, with personality traits, such as goals, attitudes, behaviors and interests. All of this is put together in a short statement which describes this ideal customer’s personality as it relates to your business.

Let’s get started on how to develop your target personas:

• Start with three types of customers who you’d like to develop into target personas;
• Go into your customer data. Once you have chosen three types of customer, answer as many questions about them as you can, using the information you already have. Look at averages and aggregate data to get some of the basic information about your personas—age, income, shopping habits, average spend and frequency of visits to your site. If you don’t have all of the information, use what you know to fill in the blanks. Make sure you update this information as you learn more about your customer segments;
• Write a summary for each target persona. Aggregate what you’ve learned from your customer data and what you have observed or instinctually know and use this information to write a summary which describes this “perfect customer.” Include his/her likes and interests, goals and motivations, interactions with your site and other relevant information. Keep the summary interesting and brief and write it as if you’re describing someone you know. Give your personas names as well as pictures to make them real;

Making target personas work for you

Creating your target personas will help you better understand your customers and what influences their interactions with you. You can improve your customer’s online and offline experiences much more easily, and help people throughout the company have a uniform understanding of your customers, their needs and wants. Your target personas allow you to develop more tailored marketing strategies meant to reach people, not data. Continually updating, modifying and adding to your personas as you learn more about your customers and your target audience will keep your marketing fresh, relevant, personal and effective.
OK, so you’ve got your three to five target personas done. What next? Let’s go back to the three areas we started with:

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
Pay-per-Click
Content and link Strategy


Search engine optimization(SEO)

When targeting a persona and optimizing a website for that persona it’s always important to pay attention to the following 4 optimization techniques:

Landing Pages – focus on non-standard terms which are 3-5 words in length for which your target persona might be searching and provide them with a landing page which suits their needs exactly.

Meta Tags – each page of your website must keep your target persona in focus when writing the title and description.

Internal Linking – when it comes to the target persona make sure focus in on the links pointing to other pages. Focus on the links that would be most important to them as they land on the pages that rank with clear calls to action (graphical buttons, banners, etc) and keep the linking to other pages in the sitemap or on pages that are more relevant.

External Linking –is a super source for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) rankings. Get readers to link to landing pages, posts, by adding “bookmark us” to Google, Digg, del.icio.us, etc and encourage them to add links to their blogs or websites to specific pages.

Pay per click

Pay per Click(PPC) ads should be specific to the term you are bidding on with the ad and landing page giving the user exactly what they seek. Pay attention to where you are getting your readers as you decide which direction to go here.

Social media marketing

Depending on your budget and manpower you should have a clear plan established before beginning work or hiring of agencies to help you. Keep commenting on blogs and sending out emails to constituents who would be interesting enough for them to forward on. The beauty of SEO is that you don’t have to be as specific to the user since you aren’t paying for the ad.


The more I get into this stuff, the more I am amazed of the ease in developing a strategy for inbound marketing. Like anything however, the complexity lies in the execution. Keep at it, and you’ll be well rewarded. Good luck on your journey!