Key Takeaways
- A buyer persona is a fictional character representing a customer segment, built from demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and lifestyle details. Most businesses have several personas, each standing in for a different slice of their audience, and giving them real names (like “Working Mom Wendy”) makes them easier to imagine when making marketing decisions.
- Personas turn raw customer data into something actionable. Knowing you target “working women with children” is one thing, but fleshing out a persona’s full life and priorities lets your team picture how that specific person would react to different marketing tactics.
- One video rarely fits every persona, so segment your messaging. Brainstorm your content, then run it past each persona individually to check whether it resonates. If a video would alienate a segment, make a separate one—or adjust distribution so you’re not spending resources reaching people it won’t serve.
- Tone, questions answered, and length should all flex per persona. The right formality, slang, or jargon depends on the audience’s age and habits; each persona brings different questions to anticipate; and video length should scale with how much information the persona needs to make a decision (executives may want longer videos than individual end-users).
- Match distribution to where each persona actually spends time. If a persona lives on Facebook and never touches other platforms, concentrate there. Mapping out where personas hang out—online and offline—prevents wasted spend and lets you double down on the highest-impact channels.
Have you ever heard a business reference a wacky-sounding character name, like “Enterprise Emily” or “Small-Business Sandra,” for example? If so, you’ve probably happened upon the concept of a buyer persona. Despite their often larger-than-life names, buyer personas actually contain a wealth of information that can guide your marketing efforts and help you understand the buyer’s journey, including your video content.
What Is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a fictional character that a brand uses to represent a customer segment, website user, or other category of consumer that will interact with the brand. Brand personas typically t4ake into account demographic information, behavior patterns, likes and dislikes, motivations, lifestyles, and any other information that might differentiate one type of consumer from another. Most businesses will have multiple buyer personas, each representing a different segment of the target audience.
To capitalize on the human element of these complex characters, buyer personas are often given real names and preferences that align with what their segment represents. For example, a buyer persona for a calendar app might be “Working Mom Wendy” or “Business Owner Bob.”
We’ll use Working Mom Wendy as an example of the types of information that typically fall into buyer personas.
Working Mom Wendy is between the ages of 40 and 55. She has two ofr more kids and is in a management position in her career. She enjoys fitness, is meticulously organized, and has a close circle of longtime friends. Wendy is at her best when she is busy and prides herself on keeping a clean and organized home and juggling many responsibilities at once.
Why Are Buyer Personas Useful?
Buyer personas help put into perspective the data that brands have on their customer bases. With the calendar app example, it would be one thing to know that you’re targeting working women with children, but it adds another dimension to flesh out all of the details about Wendy’s life and her priorities. Then, when the brand needs to make a decision about how to target the audience that Wendy represents, employees can imagine Wendy herself and how she would react to different marketing tactics.
How to Tailor Videos to Your Buyer Personas
So, what does this mean for your video content? As with any marketing content, your buyer personas can help to ensure that your message is resonating with your intended audience and generating the maximum impact. Here are five ways you can tailor your video content to your buyer personas.
1. Make multiple videos to segment your messaging
As we mentioned earlier, most businesses will have several buyer personas with different needs and motivations. It’s unlikely that any one video will address all of the points that each buyer persons needs to hear, so consider making multiple videos to segment your messaging. You may need one video for each buyer persona, or maybe the core concept will overlap for a few of your buyer personas, but not all of them. We recommend brainstorming your video content, and then going through each of your buyer personas one at a time to decide whether the video will resonate or not. If not, consider making another video for the persona that will be alienated, or at least tailor your distribution so that you aren’t wasting resources trying to reach an audience that won’t get the maximum benefit from the video.
2. Match the tone
Another great piece of information that buyer personas can hint at is the tone of your messaging. Do your audiences want overly formal language, or do they want something more conversational? Is slang okay, or should you use industry jargon? Are emojis going to add to your message, or are they a waste of time? These questions will probably depend on factors like age, digital habits, and whether consumers are in your company’s industry or not. Thankfully, your buyer personas will reflect these pieces of information, so you should have a pretty good idea of what tone would be appropriate if you spend some time thinking about these audiences. Then, make sure your video reflects this tone!
3. Answer the right questions
Your buyer personas also reflect the types of questions that prospective customers might have about your product or service. For example, Working Mom Wendy might want to know if our fictional calendar app could sync with her kids or her employees for easy sharing. If we were making a video targeting users like Working Mom Wendy, that’s a question we would definitely want to anticipate and cover in our video content. These questions will likely be different for each buyer persona, so again, you can see the benefit of potentially having more than one video to segment the messaging.
4. Consider video length
Video length is easily overlooked when it comes to buyer personas, but it’s another factor that can really differ among your audiences. For example, if you’re targeting executives who are making buying decisions on behalf of their entire companies, you might want a longer video than if you were targeting an individual end-user. In general, the more information your buyer persona will need in order to make a decision about purchasing, the longer your video should be in an effort to provide that information.
5. Adjust distribution
Finally, adjust your distribution according to where your buyer personas are likely to interact with your video. If Working Mom Wendy spends her time on Facebook but has never used Twitter or Instagram, you probably want to focus your efforts on Facebook distribution. Thinking through where your buyer personas spend time (both online and offline) will save you from wasting resources to promote your content where it won’t be seen, and will allow you to double down on the locations with the highest impact.
Conclusion
There’s a reason buyer personas have taken over the world of marketing in recent years, and it’s because they contain priceless information about how your audiences are likely to react to your choices. It’s safe to say that most businesses, including yours, would benefit from building a habit around considering buyer personas each time a marketing approach comes into question. Your marketing content—including video—will be more impactful as a result.
In crafting videos that resonate deeply with your buyer personas, the expertise and creative vision of Lemonlight can make a significant difference. By scheduling a call with us, you’re taking a pivotal step towards creating videos that not only capture the essence of your brand but also speak directly to the hearts and minds of your target audience. Let’s collaborate to bring your vision to life and connect with your buyers in a way that’s both meaningful and memorable.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a fictional character a brand creates to represent a customer segment, website user, or other type of consumer that interacts with the brand. Personas typically account for demographic information, behavior patterns, likes and dislikes, motivations, lifestyles, and anything else that distinguishes one type of consumer from another.
2. Why do buyer personas have names like “Enterprise Emily” or “Working Mom Wendy”?
Giving personas real-sounding names and preferences capitalizes on the human element of these characters. When it’s time to make a targeting decision, employees can picture the persona as an actual person and imagine how she’d react to a given marketing tactic—which is harder to do with an abstract data segment.
3. Why are buyer personas useful for marketing?
They put a brand’s customer data into perspective. Knowing you’re targeting, say, working women with children is useful, but building out a persona’s full life and priorities adds another dimension. That richer picture helps a team anticipate how the audience will actually respond to different approaches.
4. Should I make one video for all my personas or several?
Usually several. Since most businesses have multiple personas with different needs, it’s unlikely a single video will address everything each one needs to hear. The article recommends brainstorming your content and then reviewing it persona by persona—making additional videos for any segment the original would alienate.
5. How do buyer personas affect the tone of a video?
Personas hint at what tone will land: formal versus conversational, whether slang is acceptable, whether industry jargon fits, and whether emojis help or hurt. These choices tend to depend on factors like age, digital habits, and whether the audience is inside your industry—all details your personas should capture.
6. How should buyer personas shape the questions my video answers?
Each persona reflects the specific questions a prospective customer is likely to have about your product. For a calendar app, “Working Mom Wendy” might want to know whether it syncs with her kids or employees—so a video aimed at her should anticipate and answer that. Because these questions vary by persona, it’s another reason segmenting your videos helps.
7. Does video length really depend on the persona?
Yes, and it’s easy to overlook. The general rule is that the more information a persona needs to make a purchasing decision, the longer the video should be. Executives buying on behalf of an entire company may warrant a longer video than an individual end-user making a personal choice.
8. How do buyer personas guide video distribution?
They tell you where your audience actually spends time. If a persona is active on Facebook but has never used other platforms, that’s where your effort should go. Thinking through each persona’s online and offline habits keeps you from promoting content where it won’t be seen and lets you concentrate on the highest-impact locations.
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