From the course: Building Online Communities

Marketing demographics of your community

From the course: Building Online Communities

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Marketing demographics of your community

- Let's begin by defining the demographics of your ideal community into personas. Personas are fictional characters who represent different segments of your community. It's important to start with this step so you can understand which platforms and types of engagement also work best for your community. Each brand or community tends to have at least three to five different types of personas, so it's necessary to define each one carefully. We do this by breaking down a persona into two categories, background and identifiers. Let's start with background. First, there are keywords. Here is a list of keywords that you can choose from. Let's go over a few of them now and how keywords help you further understand their motivations. If their keyword set is calm and diplomatic, they're likely to be a team manager. If their keyword set is extrovert, high-energy, and innovative, they are likely to be an entrepreneur or intrapreneur, which is someone who innovates internally at a corporation. If they are persuasive and stress-tolerant, they might work in sales. Second, there's age range. For example, a persona might have a narrow range from 35 to 40 or a broader range from 35 to 65. Third, there's location. Where are they either hyperlocally, for example, city by city, or where are they in the country, in the world? Finally, fourth, what is their job? What do they do for a living? The second half of a persona is the identifiers. These are personality characteristics. They're similar to keywords. This is how a close friend or family would describe this persona's personality in a few words. Internet usage. How much time do they spend on the internet, and what sites do they visit? Platform usage. What online platforms do they frequent? For example, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Perception of the brand. What is their general perception or feeling for the brand? Primary motivator in relation to the brand. This is their why. Why do they want to engage with the brand or purchase products or services from the brand? In this sample persona, the background of the persona has four characteristics. Josh is a fast-paced, people-oriented team player who naturally would like to make more friends. He's in the 17 to 21-year-old age range, lives in the Midwest in the United States, and is still in high school or early college. His identifiers show that he has a loud demeanor on the internet, but is relatively quiet in person. His online platforms of choice include Snapchat, Discord, and Instagram. He's relatively neutral about the brand in question, but likes the community members who contribute to their online forum chats. His motivator is that he would like to make new friends. As you can see from this example, both the background and identifiers help create a full persona that will help you further grow your brand's community.

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