Ever experience one of these moments while creating content to share with your audience:

Unsure what to write for an Instagram post because there’s an idea stuck somewhere in your brain that it needs to appeal to everyone?
See posting as a chore and quickly tap a few lines about a service or product and after sharing it, hope it will reach someone?
Imagine writing a newsletter to a sister or best friend to make it a little easier?

Then what happens? Maybe you get a few repossess, usually from a friend, but generally speaking, the message misses the mark. The brand’s incredible products or services are not introduced to new interested audiences, nor does it continue building a relationship with its current community with care.

This is where Client Personas come into the picture. Client Personas - also known as Marketing, Customer, or Buyer Personas - are descriptions of a brand’s key clients or customers. And they can make your audience say “This was written for me!" while reading your e-newsletter, Instagram post, or resource article.

An important note before we continue: these are not a list of traits or some sort of brand superhero, nor is this a random marketing exercise. Personas represent an ideal yet realistic group of your audience and should be integrated throughout your brand’s strategy, especially in its content planning and creation.

Ready to dive in? Let’s create your brand’s Client Personas.

After you determine your brand’s audience, it’s time to narrow that large group down to a handful of individuals to help you focus on the content’s message.

Why? In short it’s much easier to create a message and build a relationship with individuals using these personas as a guide; and as you work through your strategy, you’ll find it’s easier to create, offer, and personalize solutions based on their needs, pain points, and relatability to your brand.

If a high-end clothing boutique owner were to say, “I want women who are 35+ with disposable income to purchase my products” that’s an incredibly broad audience, with many may not be interested in her boutique or the designers she carries. But by creating client personas, she’s able to create a message that better aligns with those who are more likely to be interested in her store, instead of hoping to catch someone’s attention with a generic post written for the masses.

The five types of personas I create for clients are:

The Ideal Client: Who do you imagine as the ideal client?
The Current Ideal Client: Who do you want to work with right now?
The Realistic Client: Who is your current customer (ideally one enjoy working with)?
The Future Client: Who do you want to reach to sustain and grow your brand?
The Anti-Client: Who don’t you wish to work with as a brand?

Depending on the brand - or industry - you may only create three persona types; and if that’s the case, I’d suggest the Ideal, Realistic, and Future client personas. Other brands may find all five can be a big help.

To help answer each persona’s primary question (the “Who”), create an outline for each individual persona including: 1) a name and a descriptive nickname; 2) demographic information, including gender, age, relationship status, life stage (if applicable), location, what they do and income; 3) interests or where they spend their money, 4) goals or motivations that drive them individually, professionally, and may or may not be related to your brand but helps you better understand your clients; 5) brand-related pain points; and most importantly, 6) solutions your brand can offer the individual to solve their pain points while helping meet their goals (if possible). You’ll also want think about 7) their overall digital use, what platforms and digital means are used in getting information about your brand and staying in touch with others.

Pro-Tip: instead of just imaging this person, find an image that fits with how you see this person. I often use Unsplash since it offers quality, free stock images.

For example, an Ideal Client Persona for the above high-end clothing boutique owner, may look like:

Ideal Client Persona: Kathy, the Socially Engaged
Demographics: female, 40YO, in a relationship, no kids; home-owner in a large metro-area; well-established professionally, earning $150k plus stocks and annual bonus;
Interests/Where She Spends Her Money: fashion, travel, gardening, social causes, wellness;
Goals/Motivations: to be more socially responsible consumer and traveler;
Brand-Related Pain Point(s): 1) often short on time and dislikes scrolling through multiple site pages; 2) worried about fit so she orders additional sizes, but hates being charged restocking fees when returning items; 3) will often skip sale items if she’s unsure of fit of a particular brand.
Brand-Related Solution(s): 1) find sustainable, ethical and socially responsible designers; 2) site has a fit guide with well-known brand-name clothing for easy comparisons; 3) no-restocking fee when items returned within 15 days; and 4) an online concierge service to help curate items based on past purchases.
Platform/Digital Use: 1) Instagram: personal-use and follows a few of her favorite brands there; 2) Facebook: keep in touch with family and get local businesses' updates; 3) LinkedIn: professional-use; and 4) avid e-newsletter reader but she’s quick to unsubscribe if there’s not substantial information or come off superfluous.

The more you can visualize this person, the better in creating focused yet earnest content and campaigns. Generally I move between the personas as I work on content and campaigns for my clients. While the Ideal Client Persona is always top of mind, I may create a series of posts focused on the Current Ideal Client to keep current customers engaged, or toward the Future Client to introduce the brand to new potential customers.

Now as you create content for your social and digital platforms, you’ll have a handful of “people” in mind while creating solutions for them. Over time, review these personas, update as your community evolves to ensure you’re keeping in step with your growing community.

bottom line:

Client Personas play a major role in a marketing strategy by representing your audience’s core elements while growing your brand’s community, further engaging and - to be honest - makes creating content so. much. easier.

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