Photo by @bwatuwant
Meet Claire Hobbs. She is 28 years old and a marketing manager at Mattel. Claire is married to Ray Hobbs who is a real estate attorney. They met in college and were together six years prior to getting married last year.
Claire is high-functioning and wakes up around 6:30am to attend a fitness class at least four times a week. Health and fitness are super important to her. She’s very particular about what she puts in her body and reads a lot of health and wellness blogs.
When it comes to her beauty routine, she is not brand loyal, however, skincare is more important to her than makeup. She has her favorites but will try new brands and/or products here and there through recommendations from her friends or influencers she trust. And if she feels particular products are superior to what she is already using, she will switch over. Price is not really a factor when it comes to buying beauty. She won’t spend $100 for a face cream, but she will pay for a quality cream that gives her the results she’s looking for. Claire prefers her products be sold on Amazon, as that is where she does the bulk of her shopping, but she takes advantage of offers from her favorite brands no matter where it is being sold.
Claire is mostly on Instagram and Facebook and typically hops on these platforms in the evenings, as she is too busy at work during the day. She also likes to Snapchat her adventures on the weekends.
You are probably wondering who the heck is Claire, and why am I learning about her? Claire is a fictional customer or buyer persona narrative for X skincare company. This will help X skincare company properly reach this type of customer at the right time, in the right place with the right content. Pretty cool, huh?
What is a persona?
Let’s define a buyer persona (also referred to as a marketing persona). According to Hubspot.com,
these are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. personas help us all -- in marketing, sales, product, and services -- to internalize the ideal customer we're trying to attract, and relate to our customers as real humans.
There are two types of personas. simple personas and robust personas. Simple personas include decision-making styles, buying stages and some basic segmentation. Robust personas get more into Myers-Briggs and psychographic profiles, market research, competitive analysis and detailed segmentation. Depending on the size and how complex your business is, will determine which type you should be creating.
Now, let’s identify the categories of personas. I promise this isn’t as complex as it seems.
- Competitive - These peeps tend to be business-like, power oriented and you need to provide them with options.
- Methodical - These guys are detail-oriented and like to become their own experts.
- Spontaneous - These folks are probably what you would expect: personal activity oriented, fast paced, and not very disciplined.
- Humanistic - This group tends to be deliberate and gets emotionally involved in things. They value transparency.
Now, you are probably thinking, “We all fall a little under each of the categories! How in the world can we use these types of personas in our targeting?” Well, each one of us is more dominate in only one of these personas. I tend to fall in either competitive or methodical when it comes to big purchases like a new sofa or finding the right dermatologist. But, when I am buying clothes, shoes or accessories I’m either spontaneous or humanistic. Depending on the type of beauty, fashion or lifestyle business, you most likely will find that you resonate with two or three personas.
