Using personas to nail your target audience

At Kane we truly believe communications drives results - whether it’s solving a problem, smashing goals or driving opportunities. We also know that good communications takes planning, strategy and research. Whenever we are sharing information there is an audience in mind. While in some circumstances it is effective to cast a wide net, when it comes to a target audience, the more specific you can get about who you are speaking to, the better. Engagement and advocacy will only be optimized when a message resonates with an audience, and we can only make sure it resonates by diving deep into the story of the person on the receiving end. 

We typically have a pretty good idea of what that audience knows and more importantly what we want them to learn. We may have some demographic information about them, their gender, age, income, education, etc. Sometimes, we’re able to dig a little deeper and get some “psychographic” information about them - their interests, opinions and activities. But what can we do with this information once we’ve gathered it? 

One of the most powerful tools in our kit is what we call a “persona”. By harnessing all of the information we learn when researching our audience, we can create a person that is representative of a large segment of the audience we want to reach. We name the person, give them specific interests, attitudes, needs and wants. By developing this persona, we are able to create messaging, develop supporting collateral and assess tactics of our plan through the lens of the individual.

Yes, this persona is not an actual person, but the persona is driven by real people and their feelings toward whatever service we are presenting to them. This is where research becomes an invaluable tool for crafting persona and eventually determining messaging for your audience. During the research process, talk to as many people about as many facets of the message as possible and take the recurring themes into a singular story that can be attached to a persona.

When you are fleshing out your target audience, where do you usually begin? The general public is almost always too broad of a target, so you’ll want to hone in as close to the bullseye as you can. Where does your person live? How old are they? Where do they buy their groceries? How do they spend their weekends? Even if it feels insignificant or irrelevant, any bit of information can inform the behaviors and motivations of your audience, and will help you craft a better message.

Above are two examples of personas for a campaign we worked on for a life insurance company. We were trying to determine our message to aging individuals who would need to purchase final expense life insurance, but we knew that a general message wouldn’t scratch the surface and result in action from the buyer. Therefore, we determined three different buyer groups personified by three different individuals, each with different motivations for why they would purchase life insurance. We called them Mary Nelson, Rhonda Reynolds, and Ernesto González. We dialed in on each persona’s buyer’s journey, crafting details about each of them as if they were real people sitting across the table from us in an interview. After identifying marital status, work history and goals for retirement, we outlined their worries when it came to their life insurance plans. 

Once all of that information was gathered into a singular persona, it streamlined the creation of assets and tactics within the campaign, and created a more measurable benchmark for when the campaign went into market. It all boiled down to one question: 

How do we reach our persona where they are to deliver a message they will hear?

Try it out yourself: What is a problem you are currently trying to solve, and who are you trying to inform? What actions are you hoping they take?

Take those action items and craft them into a persona as if you were writing a character for a novel, leaving no detail up for discussion. Really get to know this persona. Then, determine how you would communicate with them as if they were a real individual. Because the closer we move toward this personal messaging, the more likely it is that someone will be there to listen.