First, let's declutter the terminology. How do buyer personas work? How are they different from customers or prospects? These terms are a bit vague. The trouble is that these terms are vague and defined. There are some subtle differences in their definitions and usage. .
The Audience Persona & Customer Persona
AAs per the agreed definitions, these are almost the same. We need to keep in mind that the Digital Marketplace is a fast-changing ecosystem. You have to keep refining your Personas to stay relevant. That is where we use these terms with very specific purposes. Audience Persona is a concept born of Social Media. The key success factor for any brand is to grow its Social Media Audience . The best Digital Marketing Strategy never depends too much on paid promotions. We need to keep in mind that not all your followers may become your customers. Unless you are a content marketing agency.
The Example from Luxury Car Market in India
For instance, as you can see in the figures below, Mercedes Benz has around 621,000 Twitter Followers. They sell only around 1000 Cars per month. This does not mean that we can ignore the Social Media Followers. If you check yourself, MBIL is the leader in Sales as well as Social Media following.
The Social Media Audience today is your best Brand Ambassadors. who can get that Marketing Holy-Grail of "Word of Mouth" about your Brand and your Products. You can catch your customers early by engage with the millenials. Often times, it is a kid who can influence a Car buying decision a home.
How we define the Customer & Audience @ Digitsthra
In Digitsthra, we love simplicity. Simple things work wonders!
The table shows our definitions of these terms.
Terminology | Definition | Usage | Exceptions |
Audience Persona | All your Social Media followers who engage with your content | Used to create more engaging content and Posting Parameters like Channel, Timing and Frequency | Media Firms & Content Marketing Firms - Engaged Audience = Customers |
Customer Persona | People those who had shown interest (Enquired) but not purchased. | Creating the Product & Service Offerings, Targeting for Paid Promotions & Individualized Promotions like E-Mail Campaigns | As above |
Buyer Persona | Those who have actually bought the Products or Services from you. | Re-marketing, Customer Engagement Messaging, Loyalty Campaigns, Referral Campaigns | For B2B Firms the definitions will slightly vary depending on the nature of the Business (Buyers, Users and Decision Makers can be different) |
You can define these terms based on your usage. The key is to be consistent with the usage and the application of these terms.
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