Common mistakes that brands make with marketing personas

martinagvisionfact
1 day ago
3 min read

One of the main marketing strategies when starting a business is definitely creating marketing personas. This helps to understand the target audience, connect with customers, and save time or money by focusing your marketing efforts where they will have the most impact. Marketing personas represent the ideal fictional representation of your customer created based on the market research and data analysis.

However, creating marketing personas does not always have to be easy and clear. If it is done wrongly it can lead to a waste of time, money and potential marketing strategy. What can go wrong when creating marketing personas? Here are a few common mistakes that can happen easily and some tips on how to avoid them.

Woman with red hair writes on flip chart labeled "Marketing" covered in yellow sticky notes. Office setting, focused expression.

Mistake #1: Creating too many or too few personas

When creating personas it is important to know how many you need. Creating too many personas can dilute your attention and messages to your target audience. For example, if you chose 8 marketing personas, from a different age category. It will be hard to focus on all of them. Old people tend to watch TV or listen to the radio, read newspapers to see ads. On the other hand, Gen Z uses social media on a daily basis to be informed.

Moreover, creating too few personas cannot be beneficial as well. Aiming at only one marketing persona could oversimplify your marketing strategy. For instance, starting a new coffee place and targeting only young urban professionals, you might miss other segments such as students, or young parents who look for a place with affordable coffee.

TIP: Focus on creating 2-3 marketing personas. Well-researched personas are actionable and more effective at guiding your marketing strategy.

Mistake #2: Relying on stereotypes rather than data

Many brands skip real market research and create marketing personas based on their own assumptions or stereotypes. Let’s show it as an example, imagine that you are starting a new fitness app with workout plans. Based on your intuition, your target audience will be young, tech-savvy people who go regularly to the gym. However, after analysis you find out that the app is used most by middle-aged parents who do not go to the gym but want to workout at home. By relying on your own intuition and skipping research your brand will miss key segment that you should have focused on from the beginning.

TIP: Before creating marketing personas do market research through surveys, analytics or interviews to get to know your target audience.

Mistake #3: Ignoring evolution of personas

Every person evolves, changes their purchasing behaviour, their preferences, their style. This is usually shaped by the changes in society, the economy or emerging trends. For example, customers' needs have changed significantly during and after Covid-19. Big shifts toward home delivery services, higher focus on mental health or office shifts moved to the home-office.

Therefore, it is important to update your marketing personas and once they are created do not forget about them. For example, imagine a brand producing athletic shoes for college students who were their main marketing persona. However, the trend changed and students want to buy and wear more casual, trendy shoes rather than sports ones.

TIP: When creating new campaigns or new products you should definitely do regular updates of your personas. Pay attention to their preferences, purchasing behavior.

Mistake #4: Overloading personas with irrelevant details

Once you've done your research you can create a marketing persona profile. For instance, Lucinda, 33 years old, social worker, likes reading books, going for coffee, cooking and traveling, shoe size 37, blonde hair, blue eyes, living in Barcelona, favorite colour purple. The profile includes a lot of information and details about marketing persona but rather than to focus on visual descriptions, you should focus on characteristics which play a role in purchase decisions. “What are her pain points, needs? What drives the person to buy something?” should be questions you want to answer.

TIP: Focus on characteristics that directly impact purchase decisions, motivation or behavior of customers.

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Conclusion

To conclude, creating marketing personas is the foundation to successful marketing campaigns, to know your audience or even to shape messages. However, it is essential to avoid common mistakes like creating too many or too few, relying on assumptions or stereotypes rather than on data and research, creating personas and forget about them and lastly overloading personas profile with irrelevant details. By focusing on actionable, well-researched personas, your marketing strategy will be more targeted on a suitable audience.