Page 55 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

than $90,000, a family with two children less than 12 years old, and deep interests
in chess, gardening, and wine.

When you’re developing your SMM campaign, you can stop your team from devel-
oping copy for a young woman of college age. This may sound obvious, but it’s
easy to get off track when the ideas are flying fast and furious. When a fun notion
pops into someone’s head, it can be helpful to look at your persona and think it
through. You can remain focused and course-correct when you find you are get-
ting away from the heart of the profile.

So what information goes into creating a good customer persona? Consider the
following:

» Demographics: Obviously, you want to know whether your customer is male
or female, where she lives, what her estimated income is, and so on.
» Photo and name: If you give your persona a name and choose a stock photo
(or real customer photo), you bring life to it. When someone asks, “What
would Alice want?” it makes a greater impact than visualizing a faceless and
nameless customer.
» Online places where your customer hangs out: This is important for your
SMM efforts. Does he spend time on Facebook or a niche sports site?

» Online places where he looks for product information: You need to know
where he reads product reviews and what online bloggers influence him.
» Job level: Is your customer a supervisor with staff to whom she can delegate?
It’s helpful to know the amount of responsibility she has at work.
» Children and pets: Clearly, childcare responsibility, family pets, and other
home care chores play a factor in his product choices.

» Hobbies and interests: Learning about hobbies and special interests helps
you speak to the customer’s desire for specific products.

Make sure that your team understands the value of personas. Start with one or two
until your team gets used to using them. Also, task someone with keeping them
updated. If something changes, you want your customer profiles to be current.

You may not have all the information you want to include when you start out, but
you can fill in the blanks as you go along. Don’t wait until you have every detail to
create a persona. The value comes from the ongoing “investigation process,” as
Alan Cooper once wrote.

CHAPTER 2 Discovering Your SMM Competitors 39