The importance of target audience persona development, in Social Media Marketing

By India Mayer

Why is developing a target audience persona, so important for Social Media Marketing? When going digital you need to know your target audience in depth, to ensure you hit the bullseye of your campaigns. Data is at the centre of everything now a days, and you as a business owner can use it to your advantage to connect with your audiences better.

What is a target audience (buyer) persona?

A marketing strategy will only be successful if it is aimed at the appropriate group of people. By creating a buyer persona (or audience persona, marketing persona and customer persona), you are defining who your product or service is targeted to. Thus, personalising your marketing to reach and persuade those types of people and personalisation is a must, in the social media world.

The Persona is a model (template), which describes your typical target customer with research to justify. The template creates a profile of an ideal customer which includes their job title, education, lifestyle, personality/behavioural characteristics, attitude towards technology etc.

Once creating an ideal customer development, a business can target them with crafted marketing messages. With the right tone of voice and addressed to their desires/needs, a business is going in the right direction.

Its importance and how a business should use It

I know it might feel like you are eliminating other potential customers by making a persona but once you have a strong content drive on one persona, you create connection with your viewers and also benefit them.

Also, this process isn’t easy, but just because it takes time and effort that doesn’t mean you should ignore it! There are many benefits that can come from creating one and saves you from social media trouble. For example, if your providing your information to the wrong people you will experience higher costs.

By creating a persona, you benefit by:

- now you can run more compelling ad campaigns

- you improve your content strategy/brand equality

- make more profit and spend less money

- more people will know of your compony/word of mouth

How to create a target audience persona

1. Research your audience well - dig into your social data and other analytics. Maybe even offer a questionnaire

2. What problems do your potential customers struggle with/trying to solve?

3. What are your customers goals?

4. See how your brand can help them

5. Turn your research into a target audience persona (with the use of a template)

See attached below of an example: Target persona template of the West Coast Eagles- AFL Team

Good luck creating your persona's!