Businesses have aspirations, and they usually come in the form of growing revenue, implementing new product advancements and even regional, national and global market expansion. These are just a few of the many aspirational desires business leaders talk about in boardrooms. Marketers have aspirations too. If you’re a digital enthusiast like me, these aspirations may come in the form of being able to leverage additional technology and big data for developing new, highly creative marketing campaigns. We even like to think outside the box and dream about breaking new ground with innovative ways to communicate to the world. Aspirations, regardless of who has them do require a little dreaming to occur.
Dreaming Is Not Reality
As someone who has spent a great deal of time studying, writing about and actually putting to use marketing personas, I understand the value they have. But lets’ talk about aspirations. Sometimes businesses and even marketing departments get caught up in developing aspirational personas. This can be a potentially damaging mis-step in guiding the marketing strategy and the creative execution of it. Here’s why.
The true marketing defined persona is a representation of your ideal customer. The attributes of that persona should clearly define the types of customers that buy from your company. If your company decides that they want to go after other personas, this strategy needs to be clearly vetted before marketing occurs. What can happen sometimes is that the company thinks the additional aspirational persona is what they want, when in fact, it is not the persona that is currently generating enough revenue for the company to survive. Hmm, Houston, we’ve got a problem. The company and the marketing department must be realistic in defining additional personas and understand that the market may not be able to produce what you really want. Aspirational personas can exist, but they typically take time to grow and mature. They should not be added to the mix of already clearly defined personas just because your company wants to go after that type of person.
YourBrandExposed is designed to look at digital with an eye into the future using a creative, innovative marketing perspective. We’re a consultative and tactical resource for companies looking to leverage the power of digital, web, social and content marketing strategies. Contact us if you’re feeling the digital squeeze on how to best market your company.
Scott MacFarland
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Email: Yourbrandexposed@yahoo.com
Photo Credit: UnSplash – Igor Ovsyannykov
