Getting Personal with Micro-Personas

07.13.22

Getting Personal with Micro-Personas

As audience segments reject the idea of being placed into oversimplified groupings and the younger generations of our brand customers become increasingly diverse, it’s time to rethink “brand personas.”

According to UX Booth, “common persona templates reinforce stereotypes and give little incentive for deeper understanding.” Because of this, brands need to get more specific and targeted with how they approach audiences.

Consumers want brands to deeply understand who they are, and expect those brands to find ways to authentically connect – elements that a high-level brand persona typically does not provide. Your audiences expect that you will develop insights about them and their needs to customize the experiences you offer them, and the content you serve up.

Another shift in audiences to consider is their waning attention spans. A recent study by Microsoft concluded that the human attention span has dropped to eight seconds – shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years. This is a clear indicator that the way brands interact with their audiences must evolve to give them exactly what they want, as quickly as possible.

This is where micro-personas come into play.

A brand micro-persona is at least one level of detail finer than your traditional overarching brand persona. A typical persona may sound something like, “Sam is a video game developer and is looking to become more connected to his colleagues.”

A micro-persona goes deeper: “Sam is a video game developer, he’s in his early thirties and spends a lot of his free time on Reddit and Discord. He’s very tech savvy and admits he doesn’t spend enough time outside. Despite being a bit of an introvert, he wants to be more connected to his colleagues.”

“Getting granular and specific around who that individual is – that’s the ultimate key to growth and success,” says Louise Troen, VP of Global Integrated Brand Marketing at Headspace. “It will make your life a lot clearer when it comes to creativity, content, what your communication is, and who your communication partner should be, what your life cycle looks like, where your user acquisition targeting should be focused. How you target them and how that communication is tailored and adapted is really important to being successful within that channel.”

More than ever, the potential planning and business results of building detailed micro-personas are available to event planners. As our experiences pivoted to virtual during the pandemic (and as we return to hybrid experiences in 2022 and beyond), there has been a remarkable uptick in readily available data to track audiences (or attendees). This data will ultimately help form more accurate micro-personas.

Think about social media and the proprietary platform algorithms that hit you with endless amounts of the content you love – or are about to discover you love! – in the way that you like to experience it. Built on data-derived insights, these platforms can capture your attention—and keep you coming back for more. Social media knows you, learns from your distinct behavior and interests, and then finds content that speaks to you directly.

What if our corporate events could take a page from the social media playbook? What if your audience showed up to your event and enjoyed a hyper-personalized experience that was authentically engaging, helping you deliver against your event business objectives? This could be possible thanks to micro-persona work done well before the curtain opens on your first keynote.

For example, a global technology company looking to relaunch their signature user conference with an audience-first mindset asked InVision Communications to strategize a fresh approach to the entire experience. We developed four fully fleshed-out micro-personas and planned the entire multi-day experience around the specific needs of those micro-personas, without sacrificing any of the technology brand’s business objectives or brand principles.

Though event planners are not able to get as granular as the algorithms on your favority social platform just yet, we can still take the time to dive a little deeper into who our audiences are, what motivates them, and what their needs and interest are, as we design our event strategy so that each attendee can leave saying, “Wow, this brand truly gets me.”

Can your corporate events or experiential program benefit from a deeper dive into your audience personas? Reach out to your InVision Account Director or info@iv.com to learn more about how you can leverage micro-personas to up-level your next event or communications campaign.