Personae Marketing Part III: How to Speak to Your Target Audience So They Will Hear Your Message
In the first installment of this series, we discussed what personae-based marketing is and how to identify your target audience for a given program. It’s important to know who your student base is so you don’t throw away marketing dollars chasing people who aren’t interested in what you’re offering. In addition, a good student-to-program match will always improve the likelihood of student success.
Once you know who your target audience is, it’s important to figure out what they need (see Part II of this series). Knowing the required types of programs, delivery modalities, and other details enables you to both dial in what you offer and, ultimately, dial in where you will recruit new students.This allows you to maximize your marketing dollars and, again, enhances the likelihood of student success.
Next comes the art of speaking their language.
What Did You Say? Speaking Their Language?
Pull out some photos of you and your friends. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Good. Now take a look at the details in those photos. Notice how you are all dressed, how you stand or sit, what you’re doing; how you cut your hair and, if you have a few videos, how you speak. You will quickly notice patterns and similarities between you and your friends. That’s because we tend to like familiarity; it’s comfortable to be with people who are like us.
That’s human nature.
Now, with that in mind let’s think about crafting a message for prospective students in their mid-twenties. Would you write that message using the tone and language of, say, the 1960’s? Probably not. That would be a mismatch, and it would not aid in building a connection. You would instead want to speak their language, because if you do they’ll feel more comfortable, or less guarded. Either way, more open to your message.
So recruiting students is a relationship-building undertaking. Keep in mind, you begin that process with prospective students long before you speak with them. They go to your website and see the images, they read a piece of your marketing materials, or maybe they hear an advertisement. They very quickly decide whether they wish to continue the relationship based on whether they feel comfortable, or not uncomfortable, with you.
Speaking their language in all communication channels, then, is very important. Let’s call it Step 1.
Step 2 is equally important: You must understand who you are to your prospects.
That means understanding how your prospects see you—what role you play in their lives. Only then, can you craft messages that fully resonate with them. They have needs and goals, and they are looking for help in satisfying their needs and reaching their goals. You become a very important player in their story; not just a friend, but an expert guide.
To make this happen requires a deep understanding of your prospects.
Know Your Audience
Let’s take a look at our personae for Becky, a prospective student at a private religious college.
Becky L.
Summary: Becky is a high school senior, but she’s never actually attended a brick and mortar school; she was home schooled. Her parents are religious, and they want to make sure Becky is protected and guided through her undergraduate experience. Becky’s parents are paying for her college education, and she has indicated on her application that she intends to go into the ministry.
How she becomes a student: To catch Becky’s eye, a school needs to be inspirational, purpose-driven and provide structure. Becky wants a campus experience, so the aesthetics of the campus and opportunities for student activities matter. Her parents want her close by, so location also matters.
What matters to Becky: Becky cares about Programs, Place and Purpose.
What Your Target Audience—Becky—Needs from You
After reviewing Becky’s personae, enrollment data from students like Becky, and survey results, this higher education institution believes that students like Becky need:
- A personal college experience with small class sizes
- Purposeful messaging and servant-oriented academic programs
- An environment that is supportive of religious beliefs
- A lovely campus environment that is both pretty and feels safe
(You’ll want to note how different this is from the needs of the student example in Part II of our series. Different students have different needs.)
Who You Are to Your Audience—Becky
One way to determine who you are in relation to your audience is to determine what archetype your institution best embodies. Check out our adaptation of 20 Brand Archetypes to determine who you are in relation to your target personae. Knowing your archetype will help you choose your voice, tone and messaging so that your text speaks to your audience in a way they find appealing.
As you consider your brand archetype, try filling in the following blanks:
“In a world of ____________, we are a _____________ that helps ________________ become ________________.”
To find the descriptors that belong in those blank spots, you will need to discover the following about your target personae:
- What is the world they believe they exist in?
- Who do they see themselves as?
- Who do they want to become?
- How are we to facilitate that transformation?
Then ask yourself:
- Who is our competition, both direct and indirect?
- Who are you, and who are you not?
- Who do you want to be seen as? How do you play a role in their story?
Use these questions to figure out the relationship between you, your audience and the marketplace in general. It’s important to always see yourself in your audience’s eyes. You need to focus on how the prospective student sees you, and then how you want to be seen.
The two are not always the same, and a mismatch will not go well for you, ultimately. So catch this as early as possible.
Then figure out which archetype you are. Are you a hero? A nurturer? A servant? A scholar? Not who you want to be, but who you are to your student population. Use this to cultivate a brand that your student population needs.
Here’s an example to help you see what this looks like.
We worked with a small private faith-based college that was recruiting Becky L. A higher than average percentage of their student population consisted of young adults who had been homeschooled, and the college was known for producing graduates who went on to work in servant-oriented professions such as the ministry or teaching. Many of the families that chose to send their freshman to this college were looking for a safe, personal experience, more akin to a Christian summer camp than a large state university or an ivy league experience.
For this audience, it was more important for the institution to be a nurturer than a scholar or an explorer. Their student population needed to know that the school would hold their hand every step of the way to help them find success in a purpose-driven career. We emphasized this role on every page by showcasing their mentorship programs, the high level of professor-to-student engagement and the close-knit community for which the college was known. We used language that was personal, comforting and assuring.
Example Web Copy for the Nurturer Archetype
It was fun helping this institution grow by better understanding who they are to their prospects and students. In our experience, we have learned that sometimes we need to manipulate the match between how prospects see us and how we see ourselves. A mismatch here can be as devastating as a mismatch of our language and the language of our prospects.
Here is an example of an institution that aligns itself to reflect the archetype that it aspires to be. This should give you one more area for exploration and improvement.
A Brief Story About the Archetype Discovery Process
The setting is a medium-sized public university with a long history of reaching out to traditional and non-traditional students in surrounding communities. The institution had a dedicated unit that facilitated these programs, and they were very good at what they did. The challenge was that the institution wanted to grow these programs, and the staff were concerned that they could not handle the volume of work that would be required without adding additional staff members—an unlikely proposition.
In building the new website that would be used to grow the programs, the staff asked themselves the question: Who do we need to be—what archetype—to survive significant growth in their programs?
Their answer was: The Connector.
- CONNECTOR (Networker, Politician, Talker)
- Brands: AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Linkedin
- People: Oprah
- Goal/method: To make things happen by knowing the right people
They saw the value in being the conduit between prospective and active students with departments, faculty and other functions of the institution. Acting in this role, an increase in the number of students would not be particularly stressful as it only takes a few minutes to identify a student’s challenge and connect them with the appropriate resource for resolution.
Here’s the Rub
When the staff reviewed the website, publications and other materials, it was very clear why they were so concerned about growth. The institution was not functioning as Connectors, they were functioning as the Servant.
- SERVANT (Martyr, Slave, Monk)
- Brands: Red Cross, Amnesty International, Peace Corps, Humane Society, Police Department
- People: Mother Teresa
- Goal/method: To lose yourself through service to others
From the very start, they were establishing the expectation that they, the staff, would take care of whatever challenge the student faced. That simply is not scalable.
The easy part of the fix was rewriting the promotional materials. The real challenge was changing the culture of the unit to act like a Connector, rather than a Servant. Indeed, not every staff member was successful in this transition, unfortunately. But for those who persevered, who saw the value in being able to serve even more students, it was a welcome transition.
The Right Messaging—Speaking Their Language
So, the ability to speak our prospects language is based on two critical pieces of knowledge:
- An understanding of the needs of our prospective students, and
- An understanding of who we are to our prospective students—our archetype
These are derived in the process of building a personae for a given program or institution. The more we know, the deeper our understanding of the individuals who are successful in our institution, the more effective our recruiting will be. And the more successful our institution will be, ultimately.
Now you just need to put this into action.
Spell It Out
Now that you know what your audience needs to hear and how to speak to them, review your communications channels and make sure your message is loud and clear:
- Your website
- Program pages
- Ads (digital and print)
- Social media posts
- Scripts used for recruiting
- Campus tour scripts
- Etc.
Have you specifically called out the factors your audience is looking for across the board? Are you using the language that your audience finds familiar, including both images and text? Do you understand your archetype, and is it compatible with the needs of your audience?
The Final Step: Testing Your Assumptions
Once you’ve figured out what your messaging needs to be, you need to get it out where your target audience will see it, and you need to test your assumptions. Check out Part IV in our series to get the details on how to get the message out and how to test the effectiveness of your strategy.
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