LET’S GET PERSONA(L): Humanizing audiences through personas

“Why do I care?” you ask? Because, at the age of 34, Laura and her fellow Millennials have a collective net worth of more than $8 trillion and at an individual level spend close to $52,000 annually. Now in their 30s and early 40s, Millennials are taking on senior and executive level positions in the workforce. Depending on your goals as a communicator, Laura very well may represent the type of target stakeholder your organization is looking to reach and influence.

“But, there are 1.8 billion Millennials in the world. I can’t possibly connect with them all. How do I prioritize?” Glad you asked.

Personas and Audience Journeys: Making Sense of Large, Complex Audiences

The key to reaching individuals and driving desired actions is getting to know them in a meaningful, more everyday human way. Laura is far more likely to buy, vote, think the way an organization wants her to if the messaging, images, and overall outreach connect with her on a personal level.  To reach Laura (or any target stakeholder), we to need to break down large audiences into smaller, more easily identifiable groups, which we can better understand and relate to, and then locate and influence with customized messages.

Research, including surveys and focus groups, as well as digital intelligence and data science, enables us to accurately segment a large audience. Then, we can bring distinct segments to life with personas, relatable descriptions that read like a personal bio or profile page, as well as unique audience journeys. Personas allow us to understand our audiences on a human level, getting past personal biases, create empathy and to understand them from the viewpoint of someone in that audience. Whereas the journeys give us a look into the daily/weekly/monthly cadence of how members of that audience live their lives.

Once established, personas prevent an organization from wasting resources trying to get the attention of audiences that do not align with their communications goals and broader business needs. Likewise, personas identify what in your current messaging is less important and inspires ideas for future evolutions in the overall narrative. By helping zero in on exactly who is primed for an organization’s messaging, personas ultimately help save time and money. What’s more, the process of building personas brings along your organization, creating buy-in throughout their creation.

Personas and their corresponding audience journeys serve as the basis of a comprehensive communication strategy that puts the audience experience at the center. This helps organizations meet audiences not just where they are today, but tomorrow too. In addition, personas help guide internal communicators on priority target audiences in an easy-to-use format, as well as keep organizations focused on where/when/how/why to meet key stakeholders with particular messages.

By layering on a robust digital intelligence program, the overall communications strategy can continue to adapt as the world changes and audiences evolve. Marketers even can anticipate future scenarios and be prepared for individual audience responses.

The question is – how do I know if my organization would benefit from a persona strategy? This can be answered by considering some key reference points:

• Do you struggle to succinctly define your target audience(s)?
• Do different teams within the organization have different, or even opposing, approaches to attracting the attention of your audience(s)?
• Is it difficult for you to identify the right messages to communicate business goals?
• Does your organization have many different audiences you need to reach with messaging, but struggle with how to ensure the right people see the right things?
• Do you feel like your existing communications channels are not having the right impact with a particular audience?
• Are you launching a key communication touchpoint (such as website or social channel) and want to better understand how each audience might use it?
• Do you have one main audience group that has very distinct niches that need to be addressed as part of your communication strategy?
• Does your organization have a new – or newly prioritized – audience to reach that is not well understood by internal communicators?

If the answer is yes to any one of these, a persona can help.

Anatomy of a persona

Personas can come in a wide variety of forms to meet your organization’s needs. We give the persona a name, occupation and highlight a number of personal anecdotes based on data to help your organization better relate to and plan around that target audience.  The end result is a persona that feels a lot like a real person you might know in your own personal life or meet on the street. We also highlight goals and frustrations that might guide the persona’s personal behavior, alongside digital preferences and routines. Once again, meet Laura …

Conclusion

Whether you have been targeting an audience for decades or are learning a new audience that you hope to reach in the future, personas are a great way to humanize the way your organization thinks about its target audience and (re-)energize your communications strategy to reach it.