Target Audiences vs. Buyer and Marketing Personas
Believing that buyer personas and target audiences are the same is a common mistake in today's marketing world. Even though they are related, they are two different pillars to create a holistic customer-centric strategy within the organization. In fact, target audiences are a basic, superficial approach to categorizing audiences of customers. In contrast, well-defined personas allow marketers to get a proper understanding of who the customers really are. One could say: "Personas are archetypes of customers within a target audience, or simplified, the target audience is the wrapping, and personas are the actual content."
However, let us take a closer look.
The definition of target audiences and buyer personas
Target audience definition
The target audience may be defined pretty quickly based on internal data, providing a very broad overview of a company's customer base. They offer companies first guidance for product development, marketing, and sales.
A target audience usually includes demographic and psychographic traits.
A quickly defined target audience could be, for instance, middle-aged men, high-income, based in the US.
This information can be quickly gathered by simply examining your product characteristics - e.g., High-End, sustainable briefcases/messenger bags for men with a classic design.
Some companies put more effort into defining the target audience, which means that the differentiation to actual personas decreases. But again, this is dependent on one's personal definition of the two.
Demographic Traits
- Gender: Male
- Age: 28-60 years old
- Location: United States/Canada
- Income: 80 - 140k
- Education: University degree
- Occupation: Lawyer
- Relationship Status: Single
Physiographic Traits
- Interests: Travel, Fashion, Business
- Lifestyle: fast-moving, career-driven
- Values: Success, Power, hard work
- Personality: direct, conservative
- Activities: Gym, Reading, Travel
The first five demographic traits are easily defined because they are apparent based on the product. Example briefcases/messenger bags: The Briefcases/messenger bags are used by men. Due to the classic design, they better suit the middle-aged to the older generation, and due to the high price, they require a substantial income to be able to afford them. To get a well-paid job, you usually need to have a University degree- easy, right?
However, all additional demographic and especially physiographic traits require a deeper understanding of the customer base. Surveys, social listening, customer feedback, or customer profiles help to gather this information.
Therefore, by doing the research, you automatically move into the process of persona creation. Within that process, you might realize that a certain amount of handbags/messenger bags are actually purchased by the younger generation driven by trend or other market conditions and/or given to them as a Christmas or Birthday gift from affluent parents - suddenly a whole new target audience is created.
Marketing or buyer persona definition
Personas are a breakdown of a company’s target customer audience, representing archetypes of customers within the target audience with clearly defined characteristics and differences. They allow product development, marketing, and sales to alter the communications and the product itself to meet the exact demands of the customers. Buyer persona creation is basically the process of turning an anonymous customer into a real person that you feel you have known for ages. Apart from his name, his face, or what he does in life, you really understand how that person feels and what he thinks. This allows you to empathize with the customer and address their needs in a targeted fashion.
Even though a persona includes demographic traits as well, the idea is to create a story behind the customer to feel the client rather than see him.
Let us take the physiographic traits “running” (activities) and career-driven (lifestyle) as an example. Rather than just listing the traits, create a story such as:
Ray Runner, 45 years old, wakes up at 5:45 every morning to prepare himself for the day and to enjoy the quiet mornings when everybody else is still asleep. He puts on his sports shoes, leaves the house, and starts his 5k run. He enjoys listening to classical music to focus his mind and to plan his day.
Holistic view
To underline the importance of clearly defined personas, let us look closer at the use case for the handbags. Imagine you are a producer of high-end, classic, sustainable handbags for women. You have a solid customer base and have been in the market for over 15 years. To expand the product range, you are planning to create handbags/messenger bags for men now.. So who are your new customers?
It is pretty obvious that you:
Target men. Due to the high price of the handbags/messenger bags, the customer needs to have a substantial income
You want to focus on the US and Canada
Due to the classic look of the handbags, they better suit middle-aged/older businessmen rather than the young generation that prefers big names and flashy designs over quality or factors like sustainability.
Now ask yourself - does this allow you to create a proper marketing plan and sales strategy? To help you answer the question, let's take a look at the size of the Facebook audience that reflects these characteristics.
You end up with roughly 5.5 million potential clients for such a niche product just in the US and Canada. Without burning through a lot of money, it will not be possible to reach and address the different needs of the potential customer to convince them of the product. Needless to say, preferences, interests, or way of life differ drastically from a 28-year-old to a 55-year-old.
To create a proper marketing plan and sales strategy, you need to gain a better understanding of the prospects within your target audience. The problem is, without following a data-driven approach, all other characteristics, such as detailed demographics, needs, interests, tasks, fears, triggers, and emotions, are just guesswork. This is always dangerous because personal preferences, feelings, or experience often drive the assumptions.
Assumption-based personas will narrow down the target audience but might cause misguidance for marketing and sales, simply because they are wrong and thereby do more harm than good.
The challenge is that to create proper personas, a significant investment in resources is required. In case the executive level gives you the task to create personas but is not willing to provide you with adequate resources, it is time to educate them on the danger false personas may cause.
Top-down vs. bottom-up approach
It is common that companies first define a target audience and then create personas within the target audience. This might be a logical thing to do, but it bears the risk of excluding customer audiences that are not so obvious at first glance. When creating a target audience, you basically create a box, and the personas need to fit in that box, no matter what.
One often gets the advice: “Look at your customer base and it will be easy to create personas accordingly”. That is a problem because you will miss thinking outside the box you created in the beginning. You potentially miss whole target audiences by doing that, simply because specific target audiences are not yet reflected in your current customer base.
In a perfect world, all the different personas for your product should form the target audience, not the other way around.
Summing up, well-defined target audiences and buyer personas are key for every corporation that is striving for customer centricity, which is essential for being successful in today's highly competitive markets. However, make sure you use the right approach, educate your colleagues about the goals and outcome, and do not base your analysis on gut feeling or your own preferences. Examine the data you have; if you don't have enough of your own data, consider finding publicly available data to base your personas on. Do not create the "box" too early, and try to think outside of it.
