The traditional process of developing personas is expensive and time consuming (if you don`t use AI for it).
Is it worth it?
The most cited study of the effects of using personas is from
Marketing Sherpa.
The linked article describes Skytap's, a self-service provider of cloud automation solutions and the way of using personas for content marketing purposes.
Skytap reports staggering increases of their marketing campaigns through personas:
- 210% increase in website traffic from North America
- 55% increase in organic search traffic
- 97% increase in online marketing leads
- 124% increase in leads from all channels combined
- 73% increase in opportunities from online marketing
The statistics in the year over year comparison are mind-blowing.
Additional stats from Marketing Sherpa, illustrates the improvements for NetProspex' website relaunch and email campaign using personas:
- 900% increase in visit duration
- 100% increase in pages visited
- 111% increase in email open rate
- 171% increase in marketing generated revenue
- 46% increase in conversions
20% revenue increase through personas
An episode of the
BrightTALK webcast illustrates impressive figures how personas can increase business outcomes. A software firm utilized personas in an A/B test which lead to an increase in revenue of 20%.
Additionally they tested the personas on cold and warm leads.
Persona based content increased engagement by almost six times and was even more efficient to target cold leads with persona based content than warm leads without.
At the end of their sales funnel they achieved an increase of the conversion rate from 5% to 6% which translated into a revenue increase of 20%.
Of course, these significant numbers are not solely based on having personas, but also on the creative minds inside the organizations utilizing them. Nevertheless addressing customers with the appropriate content at the right time is invaluable, as are headlines that burn right to the core of your prospects.