From the course: Small Business Marketing

Segmenting your audience

From the course: Small Business Marketing

Segmenting your audience

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- Marketing is all about getting the right message in front of the right people, and your customer segments are who you'd like to get your message to. But to figure out to message, you need to truly understand your customer segments, and that's where personas come in. A target persona is a fictitious person that represents your target group really well. So instead of figuring out how to message to customer segment 1A, you're building a campaign for new graduate, Jenny. Every customer segment that you create needs to have a persona attached to it. And personas should fit on a single page and provide a snapshot of the customer that's quick to digest, and they usually look something like this. Let's build one together. So you start with these four questions about your ideal customers. Who are they, meaning what are their demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and their interests. What needs do they have? What barriers do they need to overcome? And what motivates them? Imagine for a minute that you're marketing for a company that sells eco-friendly, organic diapers online. Here's how you might answer these questions. One of my ideal customers might be a woman between 28 and 35 years old, who lives in an urban area, works full-time, and has an interest in healthy living, yoga, and connecting with other moms. Her needs are to be environmentally responsible, increase her free time, and to continue to advance in her career. She also might want to get outdoors more, but she faces some obstacles, a lack of time, which often makes it hard to find eco-friendly products, a distrust of big box retailers to source responsibly, and anxiety around what products are safe for her child. Now she's motivated by advice from moms in her peer group, validation from certification organizations, and easy and quick shopping experiences also contribute as well as companies that align with her values. Now once you complete this exercise, you want to make this fictitious person feel real, so add a picture and a name. Creating such a target persona makes it easier to imagine the person that you're marketing to. You'll find that creating marketing campaigns and crafting messaging is far easier when you have a persona. It's a powerful exercise that you can do even with limited time and resources.

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