Creating personas that say yes

In marketing, you may hear the term “buying persona” or just “persona”. This refers to a profile or fictional character who’s based on facts about the people you are most marketing to.

Marketers try to imagine the sort of person who would buy their products. Let’s say you’re writing about shopping, and you think your best audience is going to be young women in their 20s.

Research when they grew up. What music they may have liked. What cultural events they remember. Look at political and religious polling to see how they lean.

Look at the women in your life in that age group. What do they drive? What do they wish they could drive? Where do they shop? Where would they not be caught dead shopping?

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Build out this profile as much as you can. Give her a name. Then you write copy and come up with marketing campaigns that will sell the product to that person.

Stereotypes are not personas

The big pitfall with this approach is that it involves thinking in stereotypes: if you assume things about your personas that aren’t in fact the case, you get a “Were you talking to me?” response.

Getting to “yes” involves connecting with that persona. If she feels like you’re writing to her mom or younger sister, she’ll pass on by and keep searching for content that’s for her.

You may also want to create multiple personas. For example: one might be a young woman in her 20s who grew up middle class, has her college paid for by her parents, and already has a good job with disposable income.

A second persona might be a young woman who had to take out college loans that cost more than she makes in a year, even though she got a good job. She throws most of her extra spending money at those loans, and only treats herself rarely.

A third persona might be a young woman who didn’t go to college – maybe she took up a trade like cosmetology, or jumped right into entry level jobs but quickly worked her way up to a lower management position, and believes in treating herself every time she accomplishes something.

Keeping your focus

I have a tendency you should not have. You should get rid of this tendency if you already have it. I focus on personas that aren’t likely to say yes to me.

And this is common in marketing. Sometimes we worry more about persuading people who don’t want our product than about finding and satisfying those who do want it.

This can turn off your target audience – your main personas. All your persuasion arguments can sound to your target audience like your product isn’t good and you’re trying to distract them from its flaws.

You’ll see TV shows making this mistake. They’ve got a good, strong audience of women, but commercials pay more if your audience is male. So they keep trying to change the show to appeal to men – often an impossible task – until they’ve ruined the show for the audience they had.

To those who are just not inclined to buy what you’re selling, you’re probably wasting your breath anyway, right? Returning to our example about writing shopping tips for young women. You’re writing about women’s boutiques at the mall, cosmetics shops, maybe tips for getting mani-pedis or balayage hair coloring.

What are the odds a 45 year old mom is going to find your site appealing? So-so. Some will, but most are probably too busy shopping for the whole family at discount chains to go on shopping sprees at the mall or get a lot of mani-pedis.

And the thing is: if they’re interested in your site, it’s probably because they can relate to your target audience. They used to be young women who liked to shop at the kind of stores your site talks about.

So there’s no reason to try to tailor your message to them. Maybe mention them occasionally, alongside your target audience. Like, “This is a great suit whether you’re a young woman going on job interviews or a busy mom who wants to look nice at PTA meetings.”

That way you’ve included your main audience while mentioning your potential other readers. Everybody feels included.

If you focus on the personas that say yes, not only will they say yes: they’ll tell their friends.