While Sandra Soliz and Brenda Cooper of University of St. Thomas – Houston don’t actually have imaginary friends, they have developed user personas that help them to deliver the right messages to students. Last month at Converge 2015, Soliz and Cooper led an engaging session about using their “imaginary friends” or personas to target prospective students.
During their session Soliz and Cooper answered the following questions:
What is a persona?
A persona is a fictional sketch of an audience based on customer demographics and behavior, along with an understanding of their motivations and challenges.
Marketing personas contain in-depth, lifelike character traits, including names, to help guide marketing and content decisions. The most effective personas are on-brand and data-driven.
How do you use personas?
You can use personas to develop or restructure existing web content, outline brand messaging, and get consensus on audience segmentation.
Why should you develop personas?
When you put a name and background to the people reading what you write, you can better meet their needs and relate with them. You can also improve the way you solve their problems.
University of St. Thomas – Houston and Converge partnered to create user personas and persona messaging.
St. Thomas – Houston was interested in creating user personas and segmented messaging to improve reader engagement and better recruit prospective students. Converge partnered with the St. Thomas – Houston team to collect information and strategize messaging.
Through campus visits and focus groups, Converge was able to collect qualitative information about various audiences, including gender, race and geographic location. The teams leveraged Experian data to support all messaging points and create several personas.
Since then, the marketing team at St. Thomas – Houston has seen exciting results. The personas and messaging helped build consensus around prospective student demographics and the best ways to communicate with each segment.
Steps for Developing Personas:
- Have an anecdotal brainstorming session to consider all applicant types.
- Collect data to expand on personas and make clarifications.
- Host focus group sessions to correct assumptions.
- Meet with experts to improve personas.
- Develop messaging to put your new personas to use.
- Use persona messaging to test the success of your persona messaging.
Developing and utilizing user personas at St. Thomas – Houston has proven to be a successful strategy. Consider developing user personas for your institution if you haven’t already to better target your marketing efforts.
Sad you missed Converge 2015? Us too.
Don’t miss out on Converge 2017 in Palm Springs, California. Register now and save with our early bird pricing!
