Buyer personas are a semi-fictional representation of a business's ideal clients or target audience. The personas are created by conducting market research and analysing real data about existing customers.
Buyer personas (sometimes called marketing personas), are semi-fictional profiles that represent your ideal prospective families or students. They’re built using a mix of real data from your existing 'customers' (like demographics, behaviour patterns, goals) and insights from market research. In education marketing, personas help you create more targeted, helpful content and deliver better admissions experiences by addressing the specific needs and challenges of different audience groups.
Understanding your personas means you can:
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Tailor your messaging to resonate with what families/ students really care about
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Make admissions more personalised
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Attract the right-fit students (and avoid the wrong ones)
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Improve service and follow-up interactions
How to create a buyer persona:
1. Define your audience
Start by gathering data about your existing students, prospects, and supporters. This might come from your CRM, surveys, website analytics, or social media insights. Record measurable information such as demographics.
It’s also useful to look at competitor schools or colleges to see any missing target groups or segments. Conducting keyword research (such as Google search terms) will facilitate the persona profile, it allows you to see how prospects conduct their research. Knowing what words and phrases people use will enable you to rank highly by implementing the appropriate tags in content.
2. Outline the audience's pain points
The persona must capture the problems faced by your prospective parents/ students. What problems or barriers do your prospective families face when choosing or applying to a school? What’s getting in the way of their decision-making? You can find this out through internal conversations (e.g. ask your admissions team about common questions), surveys, or social media monitoring to see what people are saying about you and your competitors. The data gathered from the internal and external analysis will help identify any patterns in the challenges faced by people cosidering your school or college.
3. Outline the audience's goals
Your persona must capture your audiences goals and aspirations. What do these families or students want to achieve? The goals should also be directly related to the solutions provided by your school or college whenever this is possible. For example, a prospective student might be passionate about sport and want to play rugby at a high level- do you offer the right clubs or facilities to help this student achieve their goals?
If the personas goals don’t directly align with what you offer, that’s still useful. You can build marketing messages or campaigns, informing the tone or theme of the approach taken. Goals and aspirations can be identified through social media listening, and the institution's customer service team can also provide insight into customer goals.
4. Outline how your organisation helps
Once the persona's pain points and goals have been identified, you can create a clear picture that showcases how the school or college can help. You should focus on the benefits offered to students and their families, rather than just focusing on the features and services provided. For example rather than saying “we have rugby fields,” say “we support aspiring athletes with expert coaching and regular matches.” Consider the families point of view and focus on making their lives better.
5. Create the persona profiles
Group your research into distinct audience types. Each persona should feel like a real person- with a name, job title, home, pain points, goals and other defining characteristics to make it seem as real as possible, without getting too specific.
An example of a customer persona would be:
Social Sally
- 45 years old
- Lives in a village in rural England
- Works in the family business, which her husband runs
- Has 2 children, primary age but soon to be looking at senior schools
- Has a large social circle, and they enjoy regular dinners and events
- Wealthy and enjoys a busy lifestyle with lots of family holidays
Not every prospect will match a persona exactly, that’s okay. Personas are about humanising your marketing, not putting people in rigid boxes.
6. Use personas to plan marketing efforts
Once you’ve created your personas, use them to guide your marketing content and admissions processes. Ask yourself:
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Does this blog, ad, or email speak to a specific persona?
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Are we helping them solve a problem or reach a goal?
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Do we show how our school provides value?
You might even want to create 5+ pieces of content per persona to demonstrate how your school/ college supports them.