That might sound intriguing but persona is not a marketing term, it’s a psychological one.
It’s important to understand the psychological presuppositions behind your customers’ behavior and how that affects your personal brand’s bottom line.
The first step to creating profitable buyer personas is to understand what personality is, how that evolves into personas, and why that matters to your profitability.
But before get into it…
Let’s dive in.
How people’s personality affects your business
Personality is the set of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns determined mostly by biological factors.
It’s the individual differences in thinking, feeling, and behaving that makes everybody unique.
It's also what gives you a personal view and approach to everything around you.
On top of that, you also have unique relationships and experiences throughout your life that shapes your personality.
Psychologists have taken many different approaches to the study of personality, including biological, cognitive, learning, and trait-based theories.
These approaches reflect discoveries from important theorists like Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, and Carl Jung.
As a psychotherapist myself, I always like to think that personality can be determined by two main tools: objective tests and projective measures.
One fine example of that is the Big-5 Personality test where it is possible to define your cognitive and behavior pattern in 5 areas: Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism.
As a marketer and a leader, it’s imperative to understand quite well yourself, your team, and your customers on a psychological level.
Once you start to understand your core motivations, your team’s natural abilities, and your customers’ behaviors, you will always be one step ahead of your competition.
I’m leaving a link for a free online personality assessment you can apply to yourself and your team in the description.
Ok, now we are equipped to address the other side of every person – their persona.
How do people’s personas affect your business?
You must have heard that humans are social beings. That’s because, from an evolutionary perspective, isolation means death.
Humans have been depending on social groups throughout history to survive. That’s built-in our biology and it drives us to make decisions collectively.
While personality regards our individuality, a persona is the identity we assume to be part of a social group.
Let me give you a simple example of how this works in our mundane day-to-day activities.
Imagine yourself at 9:00 am on a rainy Monday.
What would you like to wear? A suit or pajamas?
I’m going to guess that pajamas are the one. Am I right?
But, let’s say you’re not at home. You’re at the office.
Keep imagining yourself wearing PJs.
Does it feel awkward? I bet it does. Why?
One moment ago, you felt perfectly well wearing your favorite kangaroo pattern PJs and now that we’re at the office you feel like a suit would be a better fit.
That’s the dichotomy between personality (our individual self) and persona (our collective self):
- Our Personality says: Wear PJs on a rainy Monday morning.
- Our Persona says: PJs at the office? Really? Wearing a suit at the office is the way to go.
From an evolutionary standpoint, we make collective decisions because having common behavior gives us security.
And that is the foundation of culture, by the way.
So you might be thinking, now: Why’s does this matter to my business bottom line?
Here it is.
The subjection to a series of social rules makes us predictable. We can funnel that predictability to market products and services.
That’s the same as saying:
Understanding the psychological presuppositions of Buyer Personas makes you a more effective salesperson.
Personas live in groups with common behaviors we can target with tailored messages to address specific needs.
Doing that puts your brand on the spot.
So, if personas is all we need, why we talked about personality in the first place? Because, no matter how part of a group we are willing to be, we are still individuals with specific needs.
Ok. Fair question. Thanks for asking.
Going back to the PJs vs suites on a Monday morning. A brand could take that external problem and explore it further.
They could say:
- We sell suits because our personas need them on a Monday morning.
- We make comfortable suits that feel like PJs.
- Our suits give you style and status to help you be on top of your game.
At the end, the goal is to address personas in the most personal way possible.
That’s when a buy persona comes in.
From a business standpoint, it’s not sustainable to target individuals. There are too many variables at stake.
Also, it’s not sustainable to target the general population. There are too many variables as well.
What we do instead is to consider people’s individuality and group them using patterns of behavior and preferences that empowers them within the dynamics their group.
Did you get that?
The suit that would replace your pajamas has a social impact over your personal goals, your emotions, and your status.
It’s not just about clothing. It’s also about identity and reputation. What would people think if you just showed up at the office wearing pajamas?
So how your products and services empower your customers and prospects in that mechanics is the answer you need to make sustainable sales.
As you’ve seen, understanding the psychological presuppositions of your Buyer Persona is the first step to sustainable sales.
In the next videos, we will uncover buyer personas profitability, how to research, create, and represent them to take your personal brand to the next level.
Make sure you subscribe to don’t lose that or any new videos coming up on Tuesdays and Thursdays about leadership, branding, and marketing.
Until then, become your brand.
