Traditionally, it is thought that the best marketers “know their personas.” These marketers take a group of millions of people and classify them into about three different profiles in order to personalize the message and reach their audience. Hold on… let’s back up for a second. Three groups for millions of people, how is that personalization?
The answer is, it’s not.
Everyone wants to feel special. They want the validity that they are different than the next person and that everything they need, want, or that a company thinks they need/want should be completely unique to their personal needs. So we think about the traditional idea of personas; the idea that we can perfectly categorize a group of people based on their age, where they live, their income, title, etc., but we then think, why stop at general demographics when there are other ways to get more personalized information?
With access to geo-demographics, geospatial intelligence, and psychographics, we have the ability to sort through all of this big data in order to know what’s important to the consumer. We know what they are doing, what they are buying, and where they are going. We create these insights on your target audience based on how they actually live their lives in order for you to capture them in the most effective way.
For example, let’s call our consumer John. John signs up for his first gym membership, but we look at his purchasing patterns and it doesn’t seem that he has bought any gym clothes. We can suggest places for John to go buy proper workout clothes, and while we’re at it, we decide to look at the location of the gym and suggest a smoothie place nearby where John can get a post-workout protein shake- we’ll even throw in a coupon.
The future of personas is personalization. It’s seeing the customer as an individual, not just another sale. Brands want to stay relevant to their customers, but how is that possible if the customer isn’t relevant to the brand?
Visit “Kiss Your Personas Goodbye” to read the inspiration behind this blog post.