Developing Audience Personas

I’m a fan of paddle boarding while my buddy can barely stand up on one. We are both the same age, males, similar household income & educations levels. If you were a travel site and showed a picture of paddle boarders you’d certainly peak my interest, but what about his? Understanding your audience is more important than ever but all too often the step of developing personas for your audience goes undone. Here a few quick things you can do without going too in-depth.

• Write down a list of all the different types of customers who engage with you
• Highlight the ones that drive the largest value to your business
• Jot down the needs & wants of those audiences, not just of your company, but in life
• Write a positioning sentence for each audience that you feel they’d be receptive to
• Review the differences between them all

This short exercise can provide so much insight into how you ‘should’ be marketing to your audiences. The next step is to understand how to reach your audiences with the messaging you develop and you’ll be surprised at how this might differ across personas as well. Take the time to do some targeting and your strategy will thank you (and so will your CEO).