The ultimate goal of any marketing effort whether it’s sales, promotion, or SEO is to understand the target customer, and their pains and present a viable solution.
One of the best ways to think about this is in terms of a persona. A persona is a character sketch of a person in one of your primary market segments that addresses as much information as possible about the person. It helps you put yourself in the shoes of your customer. This is valuable in SEO not only because you can better understand your audience but also because it provides a direct way to think about content ideas and wording that your user is most familiar with.
How do you go about creating personas?
1.Conduct Market Research
While it can in some cases be helpful to begin with your assumptions about your audience, any persona you create will be of little value if it can’t be backed by actual data. Before you assume to know everything about your audience, conduct research and surveys to determine the categories of your target audience. Since your audience is constantly evolving, it is wise to develop a system that can be continually updated and position your brand as one that readily accepts and implements feedback.
2. List Basic Characteristics
Based on your market segments, choose one to focus on to create your persona. Start by listing basic facts and characteristics such as demographics, how they spend their time, what their goals are, and what their motivation is. Most importantly, answer why this user purchased your product and how your product helped them.
3. List Pains, Questions, Gains
Using the characteristics you listed above, list the pains or problems that your customer is experiencing. Next, list possible questions they might be asking or searching related to their pain and the value your brand can deliver. Finally, reframe their pain and brainstorm different “gains” or solutions that your user to might be searching for. How might they phrase that in terms of a search?
4. Create Content and Keywords
Now that you have more insight and ideas into what your persona is after, refine your SEO and content efforts to address their questions and their search for solutions!
Utilizing and understanding your market segments by doing a deep dive into individual personas is invaluable to your marketing and SEO efforts!
Source: https://foundationinc.co/lab/marketing-persona-creation/
3 Responses
Once I got started making my personas, I definitely struggled a little bit. I had a hard time trying to put myself into someone else’s shoes. I especially found the pains and gains to be difficult. I just could not figure out where to start. The source you found helped to expand on the different steps in making a persona, which is helpful. It was interesting how you brought up the aspect of market research. We did not have to do that for our assignment that was due, but that is a key component to remember!
Personas are a super helpful tool in marketing because in order to market effectively, the marketer really needs to have a full understanding of their target audience. Personas are a great way to get a deeper look into the way your target audience thinks, what pains they have, and their wants and needs. Great job!
I really like the way you organized your post. I found it helpful to read about your process for creating personas. I completely agree as well, personas are vital for creating an effective business. They are very helpful for understanding what you need to convey in your website. I enjoyed reading your post!