Utilizing Marketing Personas

Marketers have a challenging job.  We have to develop goods and services and then communicate the benefits and awareness of those products to a diverse customer base.  We use tools like segmentation and target marketing to help narrow our focus but ultimately we have to wrestle with the fact that no two customers are identical and if we segment too much we run into diminishing marginal returns.  This is also a challenge when conducting research to learn about the needs and motivations of potential customers.  The use of personas is a common way of trying to personify our target segments but challenges and pitfalls still exist.  This Marketoonist cartoon and the associated article talks about the author’s experience working with a client who was drowning in customer data and unsure how to use that data effectively.  The persona creation process ultimately gave them the clarity they needed.  The article includes some additional great persona cartoons as well.