Question

Determine three essential questions needed to develop a proper persona for a company in order to identify key demographics. Use examples and references where needed to substantiate your view. Identify a specific behavior that could serve as a potential channel.

Answer 1

1. What is the competitive advantage of the company?

• Some customers are very hesitant to know, who is the company? what is their competitive advantage compare to competitors' products?
• Let's say there is a customer who is looking for advice. There is a two-top company is recommended and based on their company descriptions the customer can identify who they are? Which one should I choose?

Example:

Company 1

We are the trusted producer of the world's leading quality and durable home appliances around the world

Company 2

We help your home to have an efficient and effective comfortable home appliances.

• The customer can decide based on what the firms do, not who they are.

There are many reasons someone may choose to purchase from you vs. your competitor. It could be price, quality, or convenience, but many times, especially with all else being equal, people buy into your brand. They buy into the reasons you are doing what you are doing. Your reasons for existing. This transcends the obvious goal of making a profit; a profit is just the result of your business activities and decisions.

2. How powerful is the brand identity?

• Another most important element developing company persona is by means of crafting a brand persona. Many companies are doing intensive advertising and marketing and promoting their logo in order to build an identity and become well known to customers.

• Creating a brand identity is very important in identifying key demographics because some people won't trust the brand that is unknown to them.

• Developing strong brand identity for your business is an extremely important factor in its success. Effective branding can help build your reputation, make you stand out from your competition, and project your values to attract your ideal client.
• Your brand is your business identity - the image you wish to portray to the world. It is one of your company's most valuable assets.
• Although your visual brand identity is important, your brand includes more than your logo. A strong brand identity:
• Communicates your business personality and shapes your clients' perceptions of who you are
• Projects the expectations and promises you extend to your customers in terms of quality, service, reliability, and trustworthiness
• Creates trust and loyalty from those who do business with you
• Helps the audience differentiate you from your competitors
• Positively influences their purchasing decisions, directly impacting your profitability.

The visual elements of a brand such as a logo, font style, website design, photography style, etc.should are attractive. The persona of the brand is usually the part of the brand that is overlooked, ignored, and for most companies, never defined and developed. But, as we have all learned over time, personality and attitude are the most important aspects of a person.

3. How do you know which message will appeal to your target market's needs?

• The company should identify elements in the international marketing environment as well as identifying market opportunities.
• Marketing should communicate how great is the company and what is its advantage for the customers.
• Marketing personas are like the foundation for building your marketing house.

• Composite sketch - A marketing persona is not supposed to detail one specific person and should never be based on one specific individual. Instead, it is a composite sketch that should be reflective of the majority of people it is supposed to represent.
• A key segment of your audience - A marketing persona is meant to represent a segment of your target market, not the whole thing. If your target market is 'Marketers', it is perfectly acceptable to have multiple personas for the different types of marketers so long as there is enough of a difference between them to warrant a separate persona. You may have multiple marketer personas broken up by business size, or industry, or whatever makes sense for your business.

It can also be worth looking beyond the traditional 'buyer' when creating your personas.

Here are a couple of other personas I have developed and used in different ways that you may want to consider:

1.Detractors - Detractors are the other people in the buying cycle who can potentially derail the sale even if your main persona is all for it. This is particularly common in complex B2B sales with longer sales cycles and multiple people involved.

2.Influencers - Influencers are people that, although they may not directly buy the product, are influencing the actual buyer so significantly and at such scale that it is worth investing time into these people. A good example of this is accountants who tell small business owners which accounting software to use or web designers who tell their clients which CMS to use.

3.Anti-personas - An anti-persona is the exact opposite of a marketing persona. It is a fictitious character that represents a set of people who aren't your target customers. Just to clarify, creating an anti-persona isn't saying you're going to actively block these people from using your product or service, it's just saying you're not going to focus your marketing efforts on acquiring these people. Here are a few scenarios where it makes sense to have an anti-persona:

• Price > Budget - Probably the number reason why you may want to create anti-personas is if there is a particular customer whom you know simply cannot afford your product. If you are selling a piece of software for $1,000 per month, then it is highly unlikely the average small business owner can't afford it (unless it's mission-critical). Therefore, by creating an anti-persona for this person and understanding factors like where they hang out online, you can understand how to not waste your marketing efforts attracting people who will never be able to afford your product.
•   Positioning - There are also times when not going after a particular type of customer is a positioning or competitive differentiation tactic. At Campaign Monitor, we deliberately chose professional marketers at 50+ employee companies as our Marketing Persona and had an anti-persona of the small business owner.

Identify a specific behavior that could serve as a potential channel.

• It is very important that the company will know who will become the potential channel of their product.
• It should by means of wholesaler, retailer, or agent because this is one of the marketing techniques as well as sales strategies to reach the widest possible customer base.
• The organization should have channel management in order to assign the roles for each channel, motivate them to boost sales and resolving the conflict as soon as possible if there is any.