LinkedIn personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your target audience so you can create content that resonates with their needs, interests, and motivations.
Personas are based on market research and real data about your existing customers. By creating detailed profiles and getting to know these fictional people, you gain critical insights that make your messaging more compelling and relevant.
Some key things LinkedIn personas include are:
- Demographic details like age, location, job title
- Goals and challenges related to their work
- Content and information they seek
- How they prefer to engage on LinkedIn
In this article, we’ll dig into why personas are so valuable for brands using LinkedIn, how to create personas for LinkedIn, and tips for using them effectively.
Why Are Personas Important?
LinkedIn personas help in several key ways:
Target Content Strategy
Personas give you a concrete idea of what your audience cares about. This guides decisions on topics and formats when creating LinkedIn content.
For example, if a persona is a time-crunched HR manager who needs recruiting tips, you know to prioritize quick reads like lists or stats over long tutorials.
Refine Messaging
Every persona has motivations and pain points around their role. These details let you craft messaging that speaks directly to their needs.
Instead of generic claims, you can address specific problems and explain exactly how your offering can help. This more relevant messaging is more likely to resonate.
Guide Ad Targeting
The demographic and firmographic details in your personas provide criteria for targeting LinkedIn ads. You can create specific audiences based on persona attributes like job title, industry, company size, and more.
Inform Product Development
Knowing your audience inside and out highlights gaps in your product or service offerings. If a common persona need isn’t being met, that’s an opportunity for new development.
Prioritize Sales & Marketing
Not all personas have equal revenue potential. Once you know which generate the most business, you can tailor strategies to focus on marketing to those high-value segments.
How to Create LinkedIn Marketing Personas
Follow these steps to build robust, useful LinkedIn personas:
Step 1: Identify Your Goal
Start by defining the purpose for creating personas. Some examples are better targeting content, guiding ad strategy, improving sales conversations, etc.
With a clear goal in mind, it’s easier to shape personas and extract insights that serve that objective.
Step 2: Analyze Your Existing Customers
Your current customers offer the best source of data to inform personas. Look for common patterns in terms of:
– Firmographic data like company size, industry, job function
– Geographic location
– Online behavior – what content they read, groups they’re in, how they engage on your page
– Demographic information if available – age, gender, income level, education, etc.
Tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics provide data on your existing audience. Surveys can also uncover details on their challenges, interests, and goals.
Step 3: Create Persona Frameworks
Group your customers into a few core segments based on common needs and behaviors. Give each one a descriptive name. For example:
– The Content Creator
– The Recruiting Pro
– The Social Seller
These broad frameworks become the basis to build out detailed personas.
Step 4: Expand into Detailed Personas
Now it’s time to breathe life into each persona framework using the data gathered and research on your buyers. Flesh out each one with specific details like:
– Job title and responsibilities
– Company information – size, industry, location
– Demographics – age, gender, income, education
– Goals and challenges related to their role
– Typical day at work
– Content topics and formats they engage with
– Preferred social platforms and how they use them
– Quotes that sum up their attitudes
– A stock photo that visually represents them
Step 5: Validate Your Personas
It’s important to check your personas against reality to see if they ring true. An easy way is to talk to sales, customer success and support teams that interact regularly with prospects and customers.
Do these fictional representations align with what they’re seeing day-to-day? If not, adjust the personas accordingly.
You can also validate through surveys and interviews with a sample of existing customers.
Step 6: Use Your Personas
With validated personas in place, put them to work! Here are some ways to leverage them:
– Name specific personas when discussing content strategy and priorities
– Refer to them when shaping messaging for campaigns
– Review them when evaluating new product or content ideas to see if they satisfy persona needs
– Segment your audience lists based on persona attributes for more targeted campaigns
– Tailor ad creative and messaging to resonate with different personas
– Role play sales conversations using persona details to practice tailoring pitches
Revisit and update your personas occasionally as more data comes in. Treat them as living guidelines vs. static documents.
Examples of LinkedIn Marketing Personas
To make this concept more concrete, here are a few example personas for B2B brands.
Persona 1: The Content Creator
Job Title: Content Marketing Manager
Company Size: Mid-size
Industry: Computer software
Location: Chicago, IL
Age: 32
This persona oversees content strategy and creation at a tech firm. Her goals include raising brand awareness and generating leads through content. She spends a lot of time brainstorming topics, working with subject matter experts, and managing a small team of freelance writers.
She struggles with producing enough content on a limited budget. Her company expects consistently engaging content that drives website traffic and conversions. But having enough resources to do that is a constant challenge.
On LinkedIn, she consumes content on marketing best practices, looks for writers and designers to hire, and connects with peers at other companies. She wants ideas and inspiration to feed her content calendar.
Persona 2: The Recruiting Pro
Job Title: Technical Recruiter
Company Size: Enterprise
Industry: Software engineering
Location: Seattle, WA
Age: 29
This persona works for a large software firm recruiting engineering talent. His goals are building a strong pipeline of candidates and making hires to meet department quotas.
One struggle is sourcing enough technical candidates for open roles. Competition is fierce for software engineers, developers, and other in-demand roles. He needs ways to make recruiting efforts more efficient and tap into new candidate pools.
On LinkedIn, he uses advanced search to find potential candidates, looks for passive candidates not actively job seeking, and engages with groups for developers and engineers. He wants tips and insights to enhance his employer brand and recruiting skills.
Persona 3: The Social Seller
Job Title: Sales Development Representative
Company Size: Startup
Industry: Cybersecurity
Location: Boston, MA
Age: 27
This persona works at a cybersecurity startup in an outbound sales role. He’s tasked with generating new leads and pipeline for the sales team. Goals include sourcing enough qualified accounts and connecting with key decision-makers.
One big challenge is standing out in a crowded security market with lots of competitors. He struggles to grab attention and engage prospects on cold outreach calls and emails.
On LinkedIn, he looks to expand his network, connect with potential buyers at target accounts, and share relevant content. He wants to build relationships, be seen as an expert, and increase response rates to sales outreach.
Tips for Using LinkedIn Personas
Here are some best practices to get the most from your personas:
- Create 3-5 personas – enough to cover your key segments but not too many to manage
- Avoid superficial personas – go deeper than just demographics with psychographics on attitudes, motivations and behaviors
- Focus on the “why” behind what they do – the root goals and challenges they have
- Bring them to life with details – give them a name, photo, company, stats – make them believable
- Refer to them often – keep persona guides handy and refer to them regularly in strategy meetings
- Make them visible – consider featuring personas prominently on your site or sharing examples externally
- Be open to adjustments – as you learn more, be ready to tweak personas to better reflect reality
Invest time up front in truly understanding your ideal customers through personas. This pays off through more relevant, impactful marketing and sales efforts over the long run.
Conclusion
LinkedIn personas are invaluable for gaining critical insights on your target audience for B2B marketing. By bringing ideal customers to life and getting to know their goals and pain points, you can craft content and campaigns that resonate.
Personas also provide the concrete details needed for targeting LinkedIn ads and measuring content performance. And they can inform messaging and positioning across the entire customer journey.
With this guide, you have what you need to start developing realistic, helpful personas for your brand on LinkedIn. Aligning your strategy closely to how groups of customers actually think and behave is well worth the effort.
Persona | Job Title | Company Size | Location |
---|---|---|---|
Content Creator | Content Marketing Manager | Mid-size | Chicago, IL |
Recruiting Pro | Technical Recruiter | Enterprise | Seattle, WA |
Social Seller | Sales Development Rep | Startup | Boston, MA |