Most people with a marketing background will recognize the definition of a buyer persona, and will tell you that they’re useful. They’ll know that a buyer persona consists of a short description of a “type” of customer, usually with a name, and presumably split by demographics or psychographics. This isn’t wrong, but it’s missing what makes them so powerful. The real strength of a buyer persona is threefold.
First, a buyer persona presents a research method and the means to categorize your findings. This makes it easier to conduct good research and even organizes it into understandable segments. With this step alone, you can cater to a specific customer segment.
Next, it enables insight into these segments. It is hard to overstate the usefulness of being able to understand a marketing interaction or purchasing decision from both ends. With this second step, a marketer can make an effective campaign that demonstrates insight into the consumer.
Finally, a buyer persona can be used to synthesize segments. Many people familiar with the concept can explain identifying types of customers and targeting them. It is a different thing entirely to identify not just what your customers have in common, but what your customer segments have in common.
The implication is an understanding of your competitive advantage, the value you provide to customers. It’s the difference between Nintendo the playing-card store and Nintendo the worldwide entertainment company, just as it’s the difference between Kodak the film company and Kodak the imaging and photography company. Perhaps if Kodak had developed stronger buyer personas when they finished the first digital cameras, they could’ve emerged at the forefront of a wider, rejuvenated imaging industry instead of suffering historic failure.
The buyer persona is also tied to other contemporary topics in marketing. Take the long tail theory. For those unfamiliar, it explains how our culture has gradually shifted away from mainstream products and media serving one general marketplace towards trying to reach underserved niches. Rather than making one “good enough” product and showing it to everybody, there is increasing demand for varied, quality, and specific products for underserved customers.
The technological affordances brought by the Internet are a key reason for a long-tailed strategy becoming more feasible in recent times, enabling more efficient advertising. Rather than paying in bulk for a billboard or print ad, the Internet allows companies to market themselves directly to individual consumers.
Imagine a hypothetical shirt company using these ideas. Rather than selling single-color T-shirts from a brick-and-mortar store and advertising to as many people as possible, it could create shirts featuring popular characters from media and market them directly to viewers of the show. Ads could take consumers to that specific shirt on a digital marketplace, and ship directly. Customers may even be willing to pay more for such a specific product, as well as the convenience.
There’s no shortage of Marvel and anime merchandise as evidence of real companies using this strategy, but don’t let that fool you. While the second approach is becoming more popular for a reason, it isn’t the limit. The usefulness of these tools depends on how they’re used, and many of the largest companies have found a way to take them a step further.
Rather than identifying the smallest segments possible, consider what segments have in common. This doesn’t mean that we only need one product, but it does mean that we don’t need a different product for every customer. This might sound like a step backwards, closer to a traditional one-size-fits-all approach. However, there are two key differences.
First, instead of developing a good-enough solution for most people and marketing it to everybody, we want to develop the best solution for as many people as possible and market it to those people. The results might seem similar in some cases, but will be drastically different where it counts.
The second difference is framing. Just because segments share a product doesn’t mean they care about it for the same reason. Restaurants are a good example of this. Even though both sell food, a fast-food restaurant is selling convenience while a premium restaurant is selling a luxury experience. The luxury restaurant may differentiate between a wealthy customer with an affinity for red wine and a middle-class couple on vacation. A really effective ad would combine these experiences. Both restaurants could achieve this by showing how they provide comfort and satisfaction to their customers, either through the taste of their food or the quality of their service. It is this type of marketing that can efficiently appeal to the most customers, though it comes with the difficulty of knowing how broad is too broad.
While the above example is hypothetical, this approach has been adopted by many real companies. It’s even used by some of the largest corporations in the world, including a brand you’ll recognize:
Look familiar? Nike is one of the most successful practitioners of this methodology, selling apparel worldwide to people from all walks of life despite their status as a brand for athletes. This seems like a contradiction, yet its one that Nike expertly bridges through marketing efforts. They feature not only professional athletes from various sports, but celebrate everyday people. The “Find Your Greatness” ad is probably the best example of this, directly stating: “everybody is capable of greatness”. People aren’t born athletes; anyone can become one. Besides the positive and inspirational message of these commercials and their iconic “Just Do It.” slogan, there is an implication that Nike shoes can make you can athlete. Nike is selling a mindset. It doesn’t matter if you’re an office worker or an Olympian, everybody needs a pair of shoes. It’s an extremely powerful idea, and it is the reason you’ll see someone wearing a Nike logo on every street corner.
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