Do you generate your stories and content intuitively? For a diffuse audience? And do you talk a lot about your organisation?
The good news: trial and error can work. The rule: without clearly defined target group personas, you will burn a lot of money, time, energy and good ideas. And your stories will come to nothing.
So who are you telling all this to? In communications consulting for purpose brands and non-profit organisations, we see the same phenomenon again and again: they invest enormous amounts of money to get their stories out into the world. But all too often their messages go unheard in digital nowhere.
In this situation, they come to us and usually wish for better tools for their storytelling so that their channels would run better. But when we take a closer look together, we realise that the challenges in storytelling are only the symptom of a deeper problem.
Because the communication teams don’t really know who they are talking to out there. They don’t know the needs of their addressees and therefore can’t make a targeted, sustainably effective connection with them.
They communicate into the fog. And hope to reach the right people somehow. But their customers, their stakeholders, their community feel that they are not meant and not understood – and they keep on clicking. That’s why many stories fizzle out.
Flying blind in communication: Without solidly sharpened target group personas, you are sending your stories and your messages into the fog.
In the communication of purpose brands and non-profits that have not defined clear personas, we repeatedly encounter the following problems:
- Lack of relevance: The organisations address a diffuse, broad mass without taking into account the specific needs and interests of their community. No promising “strategy”, many stories fizzle out unheard.
- Confusing messages: Unclear, confusing communication leads to (potential) customers or donors not understanding what the organisation really has to offer. The essence is lost.
- Wasted resources: Money, time, energy and many good ideas are invested in campaigns and storytelling and then miss the target group. An expensive – and annoying – aberration.
- Low customer loyalty: customers or donors do not feel addressed and switch to competitors who understand their needs better. Painful alienation.
- Overstrain and frustration in the team. Success fails to materialise, expectations of management are not met, pressure steadily increases. Tensions and conflicts arise in the teams, high sick leave and fluctuation. Culture and team spirit suffer, a downward spiral begins.
Develop target group personas: The key to more visibility and reach
To free purpose brands and non-profit organisations from this dilemma, we support them in defining or sharpening their personas step by step with our specially developed structured formats.
Target group personas are detailed, fictitious character profiles that represent the ideal customers of your organisation. They are based on real data, market research and your years of experience with your community to define the age, gender, occupation, hobbies, needs, motivators and goals of your target groups.
Your personas help you sharpen your communication and target your storytelling effectively. In other words, your personas are like the wind machine that blows away the fog so that you can send your stories and messages clearly to exactly those people you really want to reach, move, convince and win over for your organisation and its cause.
Persona-driven communication: aligning storytelling and content marketing precisely with target groups. And thus really send out the right stories and messages.
In our work with purpose brands and non-profits that had long sent their messages into the fog due to a lack of personas, we have noticed these positive developments within a very short time after the introduction of coherent personas:
- Better customer understanding: Your personas enable you to understand your customers or your community more deeply and to address their needs more specifically. This is the key to storytelling that really reaches, moves and activates the people you want to reach, move and activate.
- Clear communication: Your personas help you to choose, plan and shape your messages in a way that is more relevant, understandable and attractive to your community. Your clearly distinguishable voice in the chaos of messages out there is worth its weight in gold.
- More efficient use of resources: Now that you know who you are talking to and what really interests and moves them, you can focus on the right channels and the promising stories and save a lot of money, time, energy and good ideas by targeting them. And save your nerves. Huge plus in times of scarce human and financial resources.
- Increase customer or donor loyalty: The recipients of your stories and messages feel understood and appreciated, which leads to a stronger bond and emotional identification with your organisation and your brand.
The purpose brands and non-profit organisations with whom we developed personas subsequently redesigned their websites to better meet the needs of their target groups.
They do away with jargon, simplify their language, reduce technical details to a minimum. Social media content, newsletters and email campaigns for the personas suddenly meet with a very good response because customised content addresses the individual needs of the community and they feel understood and valued.
The results are impressive: bounce rates decrease, the time spent on the website increases, conversion and interaction rates improve. Customer loyalty increases significantly, accompanied by a growth in turnover or donations.
In short: In our experience, personas are an absolute game changer in the communication and storytelling of purpose brands and non-profits.
Tips on developing your personas in five steps.
So that you can target your communication and storytelling precisely to your target groups and really tell the right stories.
- Analyse your data: Your existing customer or donor data offers valuable insights into the behaviour and needs of your target groups. It is the compass that steers you in the right direction.
- Surveys and interviews: Direct feedback from your customers or donors can also be used to define your personas.
- Workshops and brainstorming: Your teams can work together in structured workshops to create coherent personas based on your knowledge of your community. Most of the time, your experiences are more accurate and helpful than market research.
- Market research: You can use external market research to polish the profile of your personas.
- Persona templates. Summarise your findings for each persona in a suitable template. Be sure to also give each persona a name and a face by choosing a photo for them.
Dive deeper? In your free strategy meeting we will clarify what you are about and how we can best support you.