Personas are fictional, representative characters that are created to represent the different user types that might use a product or service. In product marketing, personas can be extremely helpful in guiding the development of messaging, positioning, and go-to-market strategies.
There are several benefits to using personas in product marketing:
Improved target market understanding: Personas help product marketers better understand the needs, goals, and behaviors of their target audience. This understanding can inform product development, messaging, and positioning strategies. For example, after developing personas at Said Business School we realised that while our messaging was perfect for prospective students, we often failed to ackowledge our other audiences, namely alumni, current students, senior academics, and the local community.
Enhanced customer empathy: Personas help product marketers put themselves in the shoes of their customers, which can lead to more customer-centric marketing efforts. For example, at Reckon a persona building exercise helped our team have meaningful conversations about the real challenges that small businesses face and how these may differ based on the organisations size.
Consistency in messaging: Personas can help ensure that marketing messaging is consistent across channels and touchpoints. This is because personas provide a clear understanding of the target audience, which can guide messaging and content creation. This consistency had a big impact at Said Business School where the matrix structure of the organisation meant that people from different teams (often in different geographic locations) would be writing content aimed at the same audience.
Enhanced teamwork: Personas can help bring cross-functional teams together, as they provide a shared understanding of the customer and can facilitate better collaboration. At SiteMinder, our User Experience team conducted some great customer research that helped them make improvements to our products. By using this research to build personas both teams were able to ensure that we had a common customer in mind and that our marketing and product efforts were aligned.
Improved decision making: Personas can help product marketers make more informed decisions, as they provide a clear understanding of the customer’s needs, goals, and behaviors. For example, after carring out extensive customer research at Reckon our team thought we had a pretty good understanding of SMB consumers. However it wasn’t until we developed personas that we realised just how many distict groups there were within the SMB community. For example Micro-Businesses, which are defined as businesses with fewer than five employees, often face far greater resources limitations (i.e. financial, legal, marketing, and HR challenges) than their larger SMB counterparts.
Overall, personas are a valuable tool for product marketers, as they can help improve target market understanding, enhance customer empathy, ensure consistency in messaging, enhance teamwork, and improve decision making. By using personas in their marketing efforts, product marketers can create more targeted, effective campaigns that drive results.
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