Digital Storytellers

    Creating a buyer/customer persona is very similar to the process authors go through when developing a novel, although the end result has fewer words. Author create their plots by brainstorming, researching, and/or creating vision boards for how they want their story to develop. So, in that respect, advertisers are storytellers. They research the age, demographic details, profession, goals, and buying behaviors of current customers to develop a fictional target persona. They build a fictional person by combining data from multiple real-life consumers into one; basically, they are creating a marketable version of Frankenstein's monster, similar to the novel when Frankenstein combined different human body parts to create "life". However, advertisers don't stop at just one; they create a series of personas to cover a vast majority of the potential consumers in the market. (See the image below) 

    However, unlike stories that have stereotypical endings, like the death of Frankenstein's monster, a consumer persona never ends; it's continually updated to evolve alongside the ever-changing market. This ensures that the data collected from the consumers offers the most recent insights into their behaviors. Personas help advertisers tailor their message to match the delivery of their product with how the consumer is intended to use it. They are a vital and necessary part of understanding the consumers from an individual and collective mindset. 

    Buyer personas are especially important in digital marketing because of how saturated the market is. The messages to consumers in the modern age need to be more focused than ever. If not, advertisers face the risk of losing potential customers because they feel the message doesn't relate to them, or that it is too mainstream and thus gets lost in the funnel of all the digital noise. Consumers of the modern age are more niche than ever before because of that. They have the ability to filter their content intake so efficiently now because of the lack of boundaries in the digital market. This makes personal targeting/personas the best option to break through to the consumers and influence their purchasing behavior.