Target Audience And Persona. What Are They And What Are They For?

By Author: Jane Smith
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Currently knowing just the target audience of your company is not enough, it is essential to know the exact profile of your customer for your business to succeed.

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In this article we will introduce:

What is Target Public
What are Personas
Characteristics of a Persona
Audience Definition Comparison and Persona
Benefits of Mapping a Persona
What is Target Audience?
The theoretical concept of Target Audience is quite simple and you probably already know and may have used it at some point because it is very popular in the corporate world and even outside of it.

It is understood that the target audience is a group of people in society that have characteristics in common (age, gender, interests, professions, etc.) and in which you will direct your messages and actions. These are usually more general definitions of this “subset” of society based on the characteristics that matter to you or your business at any given time.

A ...
... practical way to understand what a target audience is is by exemplifying it. Below is a simple example:

“Men between 30 and 45 years old, residents of SP with salary between 5 and 10 thousand”.

Defining the target audience, however simple and broad, has always been important in the corporate world and has long served to target the types of products a company would produce and the services it would provide, being the cornerstone of its companies.

What are Personas?
With the evolution of society and the way of doing business, the simple definition of the target audience was not enough to reach the people you want to reach, because what was defined was something very broad and useless today.

Nowadays you need to know your potential clients in-depth, what they do, how much they earn, their day-to-day habits, where they go, how they speak, their difficulties and what else they may know about it. Today you need a lot more personal relationships so that your potential client can identify with what you offer and what you have to offer them. Whether it's a product, service, or information, whether it's free or paid, it will only “consume” with you or your business if you really think you have something very good to offer and solve your need.

In this more closed and targeted concept of the public, what we call “Persona” emerged. The term “Persona” is much stronger than the target audience, as it specifically defines those you want to direct your efforts to, personifying them.

The definition I really like about Persona is as follows:

“Persona is a fictional representation of your ideal consumer, created from real data.”

Characteristics of a Persona
A persona has the following basic characteristics:

Persona Name:
Age
Sex
Marital status
Children
Age of child (ren)
Where do you live?
Level of education
Profession
Job / Occupation - What does your persona do?
Where does your persona work?
How much do you earn?
What media does Persona use?
What are the main goals of this Persona?
What are the main problems/challenges of this Persona?
How can my company help this Persona?
What is the number of employees in your company?
What is the area of expertise of your company?
Representative image of this persona (photo or image)
These are just a few general features and can be expanded as needed. The idea here is to show that it is a definition much closer to your real customer.

A simple example of a persona is:

“Maria Lucia, a 43-year-old divorced wife, an 18-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter, designer (MEI), has a monthly income of R $ 6,000, lives in the northern area of Rio and works in Barra da Tijuca. , uses a lot of twitter and facebook, is a little overweight and likes to walk in the lagoon after taking her daughter to school, has a lot of expenses with school and transportation and needs to increase her income to maintain her lifestyle. it's paying for your squeeze. ”

Notice the richness of detail in this definition of Persona. How much can be extracted and directed to produce something that catches the eye of this persona to bring it to your audience?

If your business is producing something health-related, you can create posts that say "how to improve your quality of life." If you are from real estate, you can offer a property that best fits your routine. The possibilities are endless!

The general characteristics of a persona will help you get closer to her and will guide you on how to communicate with her, what she is looking for, what she needs to solve, and how you can help her.
Benefits of Mapping a Persona
The difference between the concepts and the outcome that the target audience and the Persona represents is stark, and how you can realize taking the time to define your persona can do wonders for your business. You need to spend some time on this before investing any penny on Facebook and Google AdWords campaigns or any other (mostly) paid advertising medium.

Briefly, the benefits of mapping personas are:

Do not waste time trying to "please everyone"
Makes better, much more targeted content
Choose more efficient channels
Create a much closer and personal communication.
Perfect understanding of who your customer is
Will my business have only one persona?
It is important to understand that a company will most likely not have just one persona. Depending on your market, it may happen that the company has a common target audience, but several personas.

As a practical example, we can take online training platforms where you develop courses for doctors (for example) and have different types of courses for different times in your career.

A course on “Career Success in Medicine” or “How to Set Up Your Orthopedics Practice” is certainly aimed at a newly formed 30-year-old single and childless persona.

A course on “Advanced Knee Surgery Techniques” is probably best suited for a 38-year-old Orthopedic Professional with a child who needs to improve their skills.

Note that both are from the same target audience “Doctors, 30-50 years old” but for each course the persona changes and you need to identify that in your company, even to produce the products/services that your company must produce/work with.