- If you're trying to reach everyone on social media,
chances are you may reach no one.
Instead, identify who exactly your audience is
by creating customer personas
as part of your social media strategy.
Targeting the right audience on social media
is so important because understanding their challenges,
interests and demographics will inform
how you personalize your messaging.
Like how 85% of LGBTQ consumers
and 79% of African-American consumers
have taken action after seeing an ad campaign
that was inclusive and diverse
because it was more relevant to them.
Now that you know why it's useful to define your audience,
let's learn how to create customer personas
for each type of customer you're trying to attract.
Customer personas are semi-fictitious profiles
that represent your ideal customers
and list details about them based
on your experience and research into their background,
motivations, and more.
The point of customer personas
is to have them act as a single source of truth
on who your audience is so you can reference them again
when you're creating your own social media campaigns.
This information about your customers
can come from observations,
reviewing existing analytics data from your website,
social media, retail locations,
CRM, or other contact points.
Or even from conducting a survey or running a focus group.
Start putting together your own personas
by organizing your customers into different groups
then assign demographics and behaviors
that accurately define them.
For example, a yoga studio
might have three customer personas,
college-age millennials, working parents, and retirees
based on what time of day they participate
in the studio's classes.
Creating a customer persona for working parents
might start by naming the persona the mindful parent
as it's easy to remember a specific nickname
to reference this customer group.
From there, you'd clarify
some useful demographics about them
like their typical age range, profession, education level,
family life, common personality traits,
and their yoga preferences.
This data could've been collected
from their customer profile they filled out
when signing up for a class
combined with demographic research you've referenced
on the yoga practices of Americans.
After that, you'd outline patterns in their behavior
like their personal goals in taking yoga classes,
what their common frustrations are
when it comes to fitness,
and why they chose your studio over others.
This information might have come from sending a survey
to customers over email to learn
about their motivations behind their attendance
and their mindset when it comes to fitness.
While your personas are always a work in progress,
use them as a litmus test for ensuring
all your social media campaigns are aimed
at reaching the right people, your customers.