Tech Speak Now

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing strate­gies involve research­ing and build­ing a data­base of key influ­encers, com­mu­ni­cat­ing the company’s mes­sage through these chan­nels, and fos­ter­ing rela­tion­ships. If you want to learn more about delv­ing into influ­encer mar­ket­ing your­self, here is a guide to get­ting started.  We recently helped one of our expansion stage port­fo­lio com­pa­nies develop an influ­ence mar­ket­ing strategy—a pow­er­ful and inno­v­a­tive approach that reaps amaz­ing results.

But before you do, take a les­son from our recent endeavor: you may be mis­un­der­stand­ing a vital piece of the process.

With the port­fo­lio com­pany in ques­tion, we jumped right into the plan­ning ses­sion with a dis­cus­sion about the inputs, con­tent types, chan­nels, and pos­si­ble influ­encers to tar­get. Our con­ver­sa­tion soon stopped dead in its tracks; we hadn’t dis­cussed one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents to any strat­egy: our tar­gets. Who, exactly, are we tar­get­ing with the influ­encer pro­gram? Who are our per­sonas?

A tar­get per­sona essentially is defined as an amal­gam of char­ac­ter­is­tics rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a mar­ket. Since your prod­uct or ser­vice will not be attractive to everyone (as much as you’d like it to), you take a group of them—a tar­get segment—and iden­tify com­mon traits amongst the group. These then become your goals, or your “people.”

In it, four dif­fer­ent types of per­sonas are classified:

1. The pri­mary per­sona points to the pri­mary user of the par­tic­u­lar inter­face or entire product.
2. The sec­ondary per­sona is another user of the pri­mary inter­face, one for whom we will make accom­mo­da­tions so long as the pri­mary persona’s expe­ri­ence is not compromised.
3. The neg­a­tive per­sona defines the user for whom we explic­itly will not include prod­uct fea­tures or capa­bil­i­ties because to do so will pull our prod­uct in a direc­tion we do not wish to go.
4. The buyer per­sona defines the buyer (either an exten­sion of an exist­ing per­sona or a non-user) whose biases and needs must be addressed in the prod­uct and/or the mar­ket­ing material.

You ought to also assemble a detailed, defined char­ac­ter from the infor­ma­tion you researched and compiled on your tar­get mar­ket (culled from the mar­ket research you’ve hope­fully executed).This means assign­ing a name, age, socioe­co­nomic class, needs, pain-points, and more. Remem­ber: per­sonas need to be revised on a very reg­u­lar basis. The mar­ket fluc­tu­ates rad­i­cally and often, and so do peo­ple and their tastes. Assum­ing that a one-time demar­ca­tion of your per­sonas exon­er­ates you from having to do it again is a sure­fire way to mis­un­der­stand your ever-changing targets.

Now you’re play­ing with “the power of the per­sona.” The communication process with your personas seems easier when you are viewing your product offerings through their eyes. Pain-point fea­tures are pri­or­i­tized, super­flu­ous infor­ma­tion is cut, your product’s value becomes the cen­ter­piece of stream­lined prod­uct mes­sag­ing, among other things. Devise your copy­writ­ing using their voice. If you developed your persona well, you should know how they act and speak.

Per­sona dis­cov­ery isn’t as uncomplicated as it may appear—there are many pit­falls that can hob­ble your progress. The biggest and most com­mon mis­take in craft­ing per­sonas is con­fus­ing the con­cept with mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion. Mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion is about divid­ing your mar­ket into sub­groups most per­ti­nent to your busi­ness. Per­sonas are about human­iz­ing your approach to need-fulfillment. These con­cepts are com­pli­men­tary, and they have mutu­ally exclu­sive principles—but are not iden­ti­cal.

With a solid sched­ule of revi­sions and a con­stant stream of updates, your newly devel­oped per­sonas will enable your busi­ness develop and evolve. Per­sonas are the back­bone of every successful influ­encer mar­ket­ing strat­egy; don’t start your endeav­ors with­out them!

Amanda Maksymiw is a Marketing Associate at OpenView Labs, responsible for content creation and strategy for OpenView and its portfolio companies.