Persona Mapping: What It Is and Why You Need to Do It

Now that consumers have even more power on social media, engaged and loyal customers are of the utmost importance to companies. This means that customer relations should be exemplary in any and every way.

Social media belongs to a collection of marketing channels that businesses should use. We discuss brands and products online, and those discussions happen predominantly on social platforms.

To help you understand what your customers need and want, it's worth mapping their personas. This will help you better understand what types of things appeal to them, optimizing and improving client experiences. It's also a good way to get started if you have a hard time deciding who your target audience is.

Persona mapping helps you better target and reach the right customers, so it's essential for social media marketing. Here, we'll sketch out how to create a persona for your marketing campaign;

What is persona mapping?

With "persona mapping," you can create profiles to better target specific groups for your product/service. This should help you better understand the people who are interested in what you offer—their values, motivations, affinities, and other aspects of their lives.

Qualitative research is used to build these customer profiles, such as interviewing existing customers and asking them about their goals, motivations, and needs.

Persona mapping used to be done qualitatively, but now you can do it quantitatively—analyzed with AI-assisted social media analytics. This allows you to automatically group your viewers into personas based on their social data.

What are the advantages of persona mapping?

In contrast to traditional research and demographic methodologies, persona mapping offers a more in-depth understanding of our customers. It provides us with the means to develop customized strategies that have a positive effect on customer satisfaction.

So, what are the steps to designing your persona map? The first thing you need to do is look at the general population.

Social media marketing requires you to be aware of the demographics of your market. Though you can’t rely on statistics alone, they provide some useful knowledge about your customers.

For example, their age demographics may affect how we reach out to them and help us better understand their current needs. Potential customers who are of a certain age group may show interest in your product or service and use it more often than others.

Companies can use surveys, social media monitoring platforms (like Meltwater Engage), and examine their current clientele’s demographics to learn more about the people they serve.

There’s still more…

• 1. Establish a goal for your customer research

  

  It's good to know just how much information you want to include in your persona mapping. Additional details help you create a complete image of your customer—the more information you provide, the more tailored and targeted the buyer experience will be.

  Here are some examples of common inquiries:

  • What are their work hours?

  • What kind of mobile devices do they use?

  • Do they have a solid presence on the internet? What do they use it for exactly?

  • What do they have to overcome to be successful in their position?

  • What do they hope to accomplish in their professional lives?

  • What principles do they adhere to?

  • Does the buyer want a certain buying experience?

• 2. Dig deeper

  Find out more about your customers and you'll build a better relationship with them. Understanding them on a more intimate level can greatly improve the efficacy of your marketing and communication, as opposed to making assumptions about their gender, age, and other personal information.

  Getting to know someone over time makes the nuances of who they are and what they like to come out through your messaging and content. This will help you stay away from generic assumptions and various biases, speaking to who they are as a person and uncovering what resonates with them and what doesn't.

  Social media monitoring tools give us insightful data about our audience, including what they're talking about (and how) and where they primarily share content. We can also discover more about the people who impact them, what they read online, and what they talk about in person.

  Studying a target market gives you a comprehensive picture of their needs, attitudes, preferences, aspirations, and way of life. Media monitoring, focus groups, and polls/quizzes/surveys are all good ways to figure out what your audience cares about most.

• 3. Track competitors

  

  Keeping tabs on your competitors (and what marketing channels and techniques they are using) helps you stay in the loop with industry happenings. This is a great way to identify new business opportunities and threats in your niche or industry, securing your brand's future.

  It's easy to find out about a brand by reading their blog or following them on social media. What are they trying to say and who’re they saying it to? There are many characteristics in blog and social media entries that make them identifiable to the audience they are targeting.

  E.g., the blog "How to Impress as a Marketing Intern" tells you who the author is writing for. Judging by the title, it seems like they are targeting marketers and prospects.

  You can also use social media monitoring to listen and learn about your competitors and their consumers. This includes looking at how buyers feel about them, both good and bad. For example, what are they raving or criticizing about their product/service quality, customer service, or buying experience?

  Doing competitive research and mapping out their persona(s) will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition. This will also allow you to provide a more personalized experience for your customers.

• 4. Analyze traits

  From the gathered data, you can begin to classify personality traits. You should avoid grouping all of your targets together under one category. For example, don't group "marketing managers,” “men,” and “those who aren’t married" in the same category.

  Gaining information about your target audience will help you create better personas. Your research should allow you to develop several distinct personas based on shared hobbies, lifestyles, and professional functions.

  Spend time analyzing the information you collect, and then use it to group like-minded people into distinct personas that will stay a lot more consistent over a longer time. Simply keep track of recurring responses and group them into distinguishable categories.

Personas should be checked against a list

PR professionals, marketers, advertisers, entrepreneurs, counselors, and CRM experts have penned a wealth of information on persona mapping. And they all agree, the “REACT” approach below can tell whether your persona mapping is thorough enough.

• 1. Real

  Ensure that all of your personas match the needs of your existing customers. Do not create an imaginary archetype based on what you hope to attract in the future; instead, investigate who you already have and find out their needs. Ensure your personas are well-researched and realistic.

• 2. Exact

  You should avoid generalizing too much and instead focus on constructing personas that cover a specific range of demographics. For example; males 35-45, females 25-35, and females 55+.

• 3. Actionable

  What kind of consumer strategy can you design based on your personas? (Granted, for each persona, you will have to look further to learn more about them.)

• 4. Clear

  Is there anyone else who can make sense of this persona? Is it possible for them to narrate a story about the person's life? If this isn't achievable, we'll have to go back and fix it.

• 5. Testable

  In the real world, try to test your personas by seeing how they react in different situations. If you feel like their behavior is no longer accurate or appropriate, make sure you can still give them a voice and make any changes necessary.

  Consider re-interviewing the persons to ensure your personas are still a good representation of them. Adjust your communication strategy considering these new personalities.

  See if your target audience responds well to the message. Is there an increase in participation? Is the public's opinion of your brand improving?

Conclusion

Achieving a better relationship with your customers is what marketing is all about, and that’s why this article will show you how to build your customer base through proper knowledge of their needs. You should be well-prepared to map out their persona(s), even without personal contact.

By presenting relevant content, you'll be able to stay up-to-date with your audience. Understanding the different stages of their lives and mapping content to their personality will help create more effective messaging.