Specific terms for personas, such as
marketing or buyer persona, are used interchangeably.
However, one thematic delimitation is essential since the goal of the personas is different -
Brand vs. Product Persona.
When clients ask if our AI can create personas for brand XYZ, our response is always the same: "Sure, but what do you want to achieve with them?" The answer to this question will define what persona type they are actually looking for!
Product Persona
If their response is: "We want to understand how we can sell more of our product by creating a personalized experience for our customers," they are looking for a
product persona.
These clients are looking for insights about their buyers. They aim to understand purchase triggers and how to convince prospects that their product is the right fit. Accordingly, the goal is to
create buyer personas for their products.
We do not want to burst someone's bubble but believing that a few
buyer personas are sufficient for a whole product range is misleading, especially when the products are not homogeneous.
Let us take a Home & Living online store as an example. Does it make sense to combine customers interested in beds and chairs in the same persona? It doesn't because the underlying needs are different. Remember, the core of buyer personas should represent the actual needs, pain points, and triggers towards a specific product. This information is used to personalize the ad copies, content creation, landing pages, and the overall customer experience to drive sales and reduce conversion time.
Trying to fit bed-related needs and chair-related needs into the same persona will cause confusion and misconception. Therefore, we urge our clients to focus on one product division per persona set, so the insights are profound and actionable.
Brand Persona
If their answer is something like: "We want to understand our brand perception from prospects and customers." - the organization is not looking for a specific product persona but more a strategic brand persona. Apple is the perfect example of how powerful a positive brand perception is. Customers are paying a premium, not because of the products themselves but because they are attached to the brand.
The idea of this persona type is to provide a clear overview of the emotions and feelings towards the brand itself. These personas will help align perception and brand message, highlight the positive perceived brand features, and counteract against negative ones. The idea of measuring brand perception through personas is relatively new but has many advantages compared to established approaches. Thereby you can link the generated insights directly to the different customer clusters.
Summing up, the first question you should ask yourself is what you want to achieve with the personas. Depending on your organization’s size and product range, it is essential to define a realistic scope. The larger the company, the more complex this task becomes. It is helpful to break down the product portfolio into sizeable chunks.
Personas are extremely valuable if you want to measure PR success and understand better what caused a positive or negative perception in the past.