Beginner's Guide to Developing Personas in your Marketing Strategy

NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- For a small business owner with limited budgets, your time and money is best spent executing marketing campaigns that reach the right customer at the right time and, of course, with the right content. One way to accomplish this is by incorporating buyer personas into your marketing strategy. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers, according to HubSpot's editorial assistant Sam Kusinitz.

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PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit contributing author, Phillip Thune explains how buyer personas can be the cornerstone to your marketing campaigns, and in his latest article, provides basic steps to get you started in the process.

• Demographics. In order to develop your buyer personas, you'll need to do a bit of research first. Your customer database should be the first place to start, but ensure you are surveying and interviewing target audiences as well. Use these metrics to configure the demographics of your target audience and use those to build a consumer profile.
• Psychographics. Determining the demographic qualities of your personas is only one piece of the puzzle, and to take it a step further, ensure you are understanding the attitudes, aspirations and values of your target audience as well.

To learn about the questions you should ask when developing your buyer personas, read Thune's complete article here.

PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses. The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter.

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