If I think back to the marketing of my childhood (print media, advertising boards, TV commercials), I cannot believe the marketing force we have today.
Instead of broad swallowing campaigns based on geography, brands can now address consumers in unique segments and offer really personalized experiences (with minimal money).
The success of it depends on your audience profile. With this slightly over -shining step in consumer research, you can personalize the messages of your campaign to achieve those who most likely convert. You can then restrict the amount of expenses that are wasted below average for ads.
In the following I will share best practices for building an audience profile and go through examples that can shed light on the way. Let’s go!
Table of contents:
What is an audience profile?
An audience profiled itself to important information on a hypothetical but representative buyer, which you have chosen for a specific marketing or advertising campaign.
An audience profile is not a broad general group. Instead it is one Fictional person you want to take measures.
Remember that an audience profile is not the same as a target market and a buyer.
- Your Target market Includes each individual potential buyer for your product or service. For example, you may sell software that can be used for various applications in various industries. In this case, a target market includes the prospects in every industry that could benefit from your product – everything with different needs, goals and challenges.
- Meanwhile a Buyer personality is the final person who ultimately buys your product or service. In many cases, you want to market anyone who can influence the final buyer. For example, your audience profile could be a social media manager, although buyer personality is a CMO of a company because she has the final tax.
The audience profile is modeled according to the target group of your company and is intended to help you create a more personalized campaign with higher conversion.
Why is the audience profile important?
There is a big difference between the knowledge of your audience and assumption You know your audience. If you really know your audience, you can create effective campaigns that speak (or solve) with your challenges, goals and pain points. This is a superpower for your marketing efforts.
By creating the audience you can:
- Optimize your strategies. Your marketing strategies should develop with the changing needs, preferences and behaviors of your customers. The audience profile ensures that you meet the right audience at the right time at the right channels.
- Drive more loyalty. By building targeted and relevant campaigns, marketers can create meaningful experiences for their customers. If you consistently do this, your customers trust that you can meet your expectations, which leads to a greater compliance.
- Achieve a competitive advantage. If you know your customers better than your competitors, you can adapt your products, services and marketing strategies to meet customer needs and to lift the quantity.
Advantages of profil creation of the audience
So what are the exact advantages of teams that prioritize the audience profile?
personalization
The ability to create personalized campaigns is the most obvious advantage of profiling the audience, but you understand Only How advantageous is it?
statistics: 94% of the marketers say that personalization increases sales.
In personalization, the spectators sometimes feel like a company that only “gets” them and understand their interests. Like this display of Chase, I could have shown an advertisement about an apartment building loan, but I am a full-time digital nomad. Instead, they showed me an advertisement in which travel advantages were presented.
I have the feeling that you put the time and energy in dealing with my business. It really attracted my attention. In the same scroll on Facebook, I showed advertisements of unbound merino. I have dealt with many advertisements of this company over the years – always browse in the women’s department and wonder if it is time to try out merino wool.
But in this ad Men’s clothing was shown (which I have never searched before). As a consumer, it doesn’t let me think less about the brand, but it’s a swing and a miss.
Modern consumers want (and expect) personalized experiences with brands. By creating public profile, you can create personalized campaigns that provide relevant content, offers and recommendations to certain customer segments.
Team coachion
We all sat together during a marketing meeting and had the feeling that everyone was on different sides. The lack of cohesion is the fastest way to waste marketing efforts (and spirits).
Audience profiles are required to combine the marketing team behind a common goal. It is even more important that your profiles standardize your marketing and sales team.
statistics: Only 23% of sales professionals believe that sales and marketing are strongly oriented.
Exact profiles all bring to the same side, create a common language and remove confusion. Instead of saying: “It seems not sufficient for our viewers who are interested in fitness.” You can say: “We have to concentrate more on sporty Andy.” You will meet Andy in a minute!
Relocation of data from third -party providers.
Don’t let us beat around the cookie glass: with cookies and third-party data, it was easier to display certain audience. But cookies are in 2021 and now companies have to find new techniques for the public analysis.
statistics. 47% of the marketers state that their companies create a plan to turn with cookie-free targeting.
A deep understanding of the demographic details, qualitative research and the robust persecution of passive data fills the holes in their strategy.
The audience profile preparation process
I will share the step-by-step instructions in one minute to write your profile.
Align yourself with the sale.
Do you remember how only 23% of sales specialists feel well -oriented with marketing? To be part of this 23% is step one. The The most common measurement of content marketing success is overall sales. Set your marketing efforts for success by aligning yourself with the sale in step 1.
An example of this that this goes wrong: I once advised myself with a menstrual cup company to help you develop a plan for your blog. She described her ideal customers as someone who lived in a big city, was a trendy and often traveled. Some of their content were:
- Best spas in NYC.
- Long-distance flight tips.
- Weekend trip to pack must-haves.
The problem? Zero of it corresponds to sales. The only type of content that creates a direct line for sale is content for people who have menstruation. The marketing and sales efforts organize content such as “You can attend a spa at this time of the month” or “Travel tips for time days”.
You can see a great example of this in the blog Diva (previously Diva Cup). Your blog is referred to as a “conscious cycle” and focuses entirely on menstruation and reproductive health:
Select the audience segment.
Which audience segment will you start with? Some ideas are:
- The customer group with the highest potential service life.
- Your most under -sized customer group.
- A customer segment that has become cold.
- Customers of your competitor.
Here is an example of this in the wild – I recently registered for a try for Semrush. Now I see displays from Search Atlas, which I just told me to cancel my Semrush subscription:
After choosing a audience segment, it is time to decide the desired actions that you want to carry out.
Select the desired action.
What action should this segment of your audience take? Your desired action campaign can be with that above or below Your seller. Some ideas are:
- Register for an giveaway to join your e -mail list.
- Take part in an upcoming event.
- Buy.
If your desired result is identified, switch to campaign execution.
Perform the campaign.
What is the best place to reach your audience? Which platform and which content type To This platform? It’s not as easy as before! Simplification of the reference to Instagram and the introduction of a static campaign is a risk.
You can choose:
- Long form-product-explanatory videos.
- Short form customer reviews.
- Educational carousel content.
- TO-THE POINT-written text.
- Brand photo shoots.
And that’s all on Instagram! Between roles, stories and lattice posts, the world is its oyster (I will hand over the tissue to you). I children because I love marketing and everything it is capable of, even if it feels as if it could crush me under his weight. We will immerse ourselves deeper in the following best practices.
Review Analytics.
After your campaign has been carried out, it is time to see how it developed. Some analyzes must be taken into account:
- Web analyzes such as website visitors and time on the page.
- Social analyzes such as shares and follow -up growth.
- Sales effect (#1).
Do you need help with your marketing tasks that become more manageable? Use the Drift Kings Media Marketing Hub®. We will help demystify this whole process!
What information should I add to an audience profile?
To set up exact audience profiles, you need the following information:
- Demographic information. This includes personal characteristics such as geography, age, education, work and income.
- Psychographic information. This includes attributes in connection with personality traits, interests, attitudes or beliefs and lifestyle.
- Goals, challenges or pain points. For this section, determine the goals, challenges or pain points of your audience in terms of your product or service. How can your product or service meet your audience’s needs? What search queries does your audience use to find your product or service? For example, if you sell an 8-week mindfulness program, your fictional character will probably have a big challenge in concentrating and finding time to earth.
- Values. What does your target group estimate? This includes greater values ​​and motivators such as “nature”, “sociability”, “belonging” or “autonomy at work”.
- Preferred channels. On which channel (s) does your audience spend most of the time? This can be social channels such as YouTube or Instagram or search engines like Google. The preferred channel depends on the type of campaign that you run. For example, if you carry out a paid advertising campaign, you would like to determine whether your audience spend most of your time on Facebook, Google or in another place.
- Preferred content types (s): As soon as your audience has found its content, in what format would you prefer? EBooks, blog posts or case studies? Or podcast? Video? The determination of the format will help you best serve your audience.
- Buying behavior: Is your audience impulsive or do you need weeks – if not months – before you make a purchase? Are you open to your product or service at any time during the year or just during a certain season? For example, if you sell beach chairs, your target group is probably relatively impulsive in the summer months when a beach chair is the most necessary.
Are you ready to create your own audience profiles? Let’s take a look at three examples that you can use for inspiration before creating your own.
Examples of the audience profile
How does all this come together to build your target group profile? Let’s take a look at three examples.
1. B2B audience profile Example: Marketing Maria
Let’s start with the example of a marketer. Instead of largely aiming all Marketer, we will focus on Maria with marketing.
- Demographic information: 26 – 34 years old, mostly female, lives in the Boston area. Works in marketing in retail.
- Psychographic information: Interested in trends and industry news. Has a flexible work arrangement.
- Goals, challenges or pain points: Increasing social media Commitment and maximum team resources. Wants to expand social presence and improve sales. The tools for an effective social listen are missing. Fight to convince the leadership of social media.
- Values: Enjoy the community that brings social media with it.
- Preferred channels: Instagram and YouTube.
- Preferred content types (s): Videos and case studies.
2. B2C public profile Example: Athletic Andy
Marketing Maria’s needs were specific to their career. But what about a profile that is specific to a hobby or a lifestyle? Let’s take a look at Athletic Andy:
- Demographic information: 34 – 45 years old, old in Seattle.
- Psychographic information: Daily outside. Rarely drinks, eats a certain diet and follows fitness activity. Objectively healthy.
- Goals, challenges or pain points: Find high -quality clothing that is durable and environmentally friendly. Wants to reduce the CO2 footprint. Trouble finding activewear that are multi -purpose and professional.
- Values: Takes care of the environment and the structure of the community.
- Preferred channels: Facebook and organic search.
- Preferred content types (s): Blog posts and social media videos.
3. My audience profile Example: nervous natalie.
The marketing of Maria and Sportic Andy are theoretical examples, but they are so detailed that Maria is about the tailwind app, and Andy could be Cotopaxi.
Would you like to see an example of the audience for a real brand? Based on the same steps, I will create a profile for my website Go through the Camino Portugués. This is a niche position dedicated to the pilgrimage path that leads from Portugal to Camino de Santiago, Spain.
I am currently not using paid advertising for this website, but I would like to create targeted organic content campaigns that speak directly to Natalie nervous.
- Demographic information: 40 – 65 years old, live in the USA with little international travel experience.
- Psychographic information: Has spent years of her adult life who are devoted to the needs of other people (children, aging parents, a consuming job) and only want to do something for themselves. Would like to try a pilgrimage to have a reflective and introspective adventure instead of a vacation.
- Goals, challenges or pain points: Not yet comfortable to travel abroad and to follow a sporting activity. Is inspired online by the success stories, but finds the entire planning process scary. Feels nervous or even embarrassing of her lack of experience.
- Values: Appreciates hard work and is ready to invest the time for training. Takes care of the community on the way and wants to find it for itself.
- Preferred channels: Facebook, pinterest and organic search.
- Preferred content types (s): Written content with images to help you help you experience before trying to really try to “live” on behalf of it.
With these important aspects of the nervous natalie, I can create content that you aim directly. I write blog posts that address your specific needs in addition to starting a Facebook group Promote real community (one of their values).
Next, let us go about how you can write an audience profile.
How to write an audience profile
1. Determine the goals of your upcoming campaign.
Before you write your audience profile, you would like to know who you address with your marketing campaign.
Depending on your goals, you will create a different audience profile. If you hope to increase sales for your product via a social media advertising campaign, your audience profile looks similar to your buyer personality.
If you hope to increase the views on your YouTube channel instead, your audience profile will look like a fictional figure based on your YouTube analysis.
Here is an advertising example of Activewear Brand Popflex. Taylor Swift wore this skirt in her music video “I can do with a broken heart”. This display tries to increase sales and at the same time makes consumers on the huge headlight that the product has set up.
2. Immerse yourself deep into the analysis.
If you have set your campaign goal, use data and analyzes to create a prototype of your persona.
Start with Google Analytics to examine demographic information about your website visitors. Note the age, gender, location and equipment – you will also find out which channels your audience arrives. Is it usually an organic search, a social channel, an e -mail or paid advertising?
You can also use CRM data to examine which customers convert with the highest rate. For example, you can use your CRM to determine which industries convert the most. Or you can see which pages have the highest conversion rate to refine your audience profile depending on the behavior of the existing customers.
Finally, use channel -specific metrics to fill out the missing parts. If you plan to carry out a Google advertisement campaign, you can immerse yourself in earlier powerful ads and who clicked on these ads.
If you carry out a Facebook campaign, you can alternatively use The Lookalike audience of Facebook to achieve people who resemble their best existing customers. The looking audience function could be exactly the reason why I saw the outside on my feed.
One of my closest friends is an outdoor space, and we check many of the same boxes: we are both independent digital nomads in our 30s.
We also only talked about Facebook Messenger about Facebook … but no, that does not work (despite the conspiracy theories). Incredible profil creation is the reason why some companies manage to do their needs and interests exactly.
3. Use qualitative metrics to determine the biggest challenges of your audience.
To fill out the section challenges/goals/pain points of your audience profile, take a look at the customer reviews or even a focus group (more about this in one minute). You can then determine the biggest challenges that face your prospects and customers.
You can also use keyword searches to find high-quality keywords in connection with your products or services that help you determine the greatest challenges of your audience.
Suppose you create a new advertising campaign in connection with a social media hearing and planning tool, for example.
You can first use Ahrefs or another Keyword Explorer -Tool to determine questions that ask people in connection with a specific search query. In this example, I searched for “Social Media Tools” to find similar questions related to the search keyword:
I also searched for “social media tools” in Google and looked at the people who also ask the functions, deeper into questions, pain points and challenges related to social media tools:
In combination with your qualitative, customer -oriented research, you can uncover the biggest challenges of your audience and how to adapt your campaign to target these pain points.
4. Collect psychographic data with Google Trends or influencers in the industry.
If you work for a B2C company, you should consume content of top influencers in a certain industry to determine psychographic data for your audience profile.
For example, if you sell fitness equipment, you will see the social profiles and blog posts from Top -Fitness -Influencern. What do you care about? What do you appreciate? What activities do you do on a certain day? These properties can help you to round off your audience profile.
If you work for a B2B company, you may read industrial studies, read reports or join webinars to determine the interests, values ​​and behaviors of your target personality within a certain industry.
Best practices for audience profiles
Today there were many conversations and ideas. Let us complete this party with a list of the best best practices for your profil preparation process.
Become specific.
It is the most obvious proven procedure, but it has to be said: your profile should be as specific as possible. This is essentially a figure that your audience represents and you have to know them as well as you know a character in a book or television program.
Be specific and add as much dimension and humanization as possible. Please note with names (Maria, Andy, Natalie, etc.) in your marketing and sales discussions.
Spray the causes that are important to you.
statistics: 82% of the buyers state that they prefer to buy from a company with values ​​that match their own.
To show your audience that you have the interests, you need to know what causes you are interested in.
Athletic Andy takes care of the environment and marketing Maria takes care of the community. If your brand shares these values, it is incredibly powerful to display this in your campaign.
Here is an example of a campaign for which I came across my head as a consumer: Nuud deodorant. They have many gold stars when it comes to the ethics of the company and I saw their ads for months before I tried the product. I finally saw it described as a “guilty deodorant” and was addicted.
It is strange transition from traditional deodorant to a concentrated paste, but they gained their customers through understanding ethics that is important to us (one that you should totally try; you will never return).
Articulate the positive And Negative.
Most attributes that have given our above -mentioned sample profiles were positive, but their campaign must also find a certain negativity.
For example, let us look back on Athletic Andy. He is a conscious consumer who takes care of the environment, which is positive – but I also know that Andy hate Greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a kind of misleading marketing in which companies try to present themselves as more environmentally friendly than they really are. In a targeted campaign, you could speak to this negative emotion that Andy expressly said: “No greenwashing here – look for yourself.”
Drill the underlying fear.
Donald Miller, founder of Story fireIn his podcasts said that fear in marketing is very much like salt when baking – it shouldn’t be the prevailing taste, but every recipe should have a little.
To speak to the fears of their audience, they have to understand them. When I look at nervous Natalie, I know that she is afraid of being inexperienced. In response to this, she is strongly researched to feel strengthened and prepared.
One of the greatest concerns of nervous Natalie is to find the best way to organize your Camino de Santiago. Instead of telling her which season I am best, I collected the data to enable you to make a decision for yourself.
I selected the most important metrics (failures, temperature, number of pilgrims and daylight). I then organized them in a guide called the Best time to walk through the Portuguese Camino? (Data + tips).
I could have said nervous Natalie that I think spring is the ideal time to go, but then she would not have enabled her to have the feeling of overcoming her fears.
Use your lingo.
Ten groups of people who use ten completely different vocabulary can be told a single story. Marketers have to select the right vocab by selecting and adapting the copy to obvious factors such as Location And generationas well as sneaky factors such as individual platforms.
Case and point: When I open Tikkok, I have the feeling that people speak a different language. Creators on the platform speak and act in a way that differs from Instagram or Facebook roles.
Before you invest your time, you have to carry out an audience analysis to ensure that you speak the same language as you speak. This leads directly to the next best practice: tests.
Consider a focus group.
The worst scenario for your profile is that your audience is doing wrong. The only solution? Questions.
A focus group is ideal, but if an entire focus group is too large for your campaign, you will carry it out from a few people. If you are like me, you will be surprised by the feedback you receive.
I wrote an article for my new niche page High -ranking pilgrim Go through the Portuguese Camino. My mother fits the profile, so I asked her to read it. I didn’t expect your feedback! She reacted negatively to the term “older pilgrim”, which clearly favored the term “senior” or “pensioner”. I found “older” a polite term, but thank God I asked. A FOCUS Group survey would tell me how widespread it is.
Choose platforms carefully.
Imagine you see free cheese samples next to a bus stop. Would you take one? I hope not. However, if you have seen exactly the same free cheese samples in the grocery store, you would accompany yourself (right).
If the marketing efforts feel out of place, we trust them less. While you may have a brilliant idea for your audience on Tikkok, you cannot automatically apply it to LinkedIn, even if it is the same audience. Select your platform and the message very carefully to create trust.
Let your persona develop.
What do marketing Maria, Sports Andy and nervous Natalie have in common? The real people behind the personas change every day and their profile has to change with them.
Consumer interests, platforms and trends are constantly developing. In fact, most marketers agree that the industry changes faster than ever. This means that our profiles can never be carved into pixels.
You can follow analyzes directly within the Drift Kings Media Marketing Hub. With these findings, you can further refine your campaigns and optimize your audience profile so that you adapt to changing interests.
Media audience profile
Media planning and purchase cannot take place without an audience profile.
For example, the purchase of media – purchase of campaigns or advertising space on various channels – cannot be done without media planning.
Ultimately, both media planning and media purchase must be a predefined audience successful. If you have not taken the time to create an audience profile before buying an advertising room, you risk waste money and resources for the audience that are ultimately not converted anyway.
Pro tip: Use ours Free paid media tracker to keep everything organized.
An audience profile can affect where you place your ads. For example, as soon as you have created an audience profile, you may find most of the time with LinkedIn. LinkedIn Advertising Solutions can then help you best to achieve your target group.
An audience profile also influences the design of your ad. You want to design the account copy to the interests, pain points and preferences of your audience – something you can only do if you have created an audience profile.
For example, The economist A public profile may have created and liked the audience that education likes. However, readers do not like to capture with too much negativity, especially of news agencies. As a result, a simple slogan, “lighter days ahead” helps to gain and convert the right audience through your advertisements.
Ultimately, your audience profile is an important basis for you to best suited the best for your brand and convert it effectively.
However, an audience profile can vary depending on each individual campaign. So please keep this post for the next time you have to change your audience profile for a new advertising or marketing campaign.
First steps
Surprised to learn how much goes to a simple audience profile? It is overwhelming at first, but the force behind a simple profile is immeasurable.
I think it is incredible that profiles can be freely created, but have such an influence. I appreciate nervous Natalie and I hope you will also appreciate your persona. Now let us create the content you long for!
Note from the publisher: This post was originally published in March 2021 and updated for completeness.