Amanda McCarthy, director of marketing for Bates Creative—an agency in the Washington, D.C. area that is soon changing its name to Beyond Definition—wanted to get across the importance of personas so she gave us an example. She came up with the American Association of Carnivals, whose members would be amusement companies and providers, carnival staff, ride safety officials, food vendors and performers. The industry challenge is a decline in popularity. The organizational challenge is a decline in membership. The lesson came during a recent conference here called AM&P 360 and the session was titled They Get Me: How to Sharpen Your Publishing Strategy. Bates has a 5-step Persona Development Plan. Here is Bates' 5-step persona plan: 1. Define your purpose. This will help determine if you’re profiling current or prospective members. 2. Conduct audience research. 3. Extract themes from data. 4. Build out the persona profiles. 5. Put your perso ...

Buyer or marketing personas are fictional, generalized representations of ideal customers that can help everyone from marketing to sales to content creators better target and better serve their customer base.