How to Create Successful Buyer Personas for Travel & Tourism Brands | Union

3 Core Aspects of Successful Buyer Personas for Travel & Tourism Brands

With travelers on the move again, it’s critical for <a href="https://union.co/industries/travel-tourism">travel and tourism brands</a> to genuinely know their target customer from a well-rounded perspective. Not just their demographics (which are still important to proper targeting), but also the motivations, fears, aspirations and even crucial purchasing triggers that compel a potential guest to make a reservation.
This deeper level of customer understanding is commonly referred to as a buyer persona, and it can make all the difference between a campaign failure and a runaway success. Campaigns built on marketing personas have<a href="https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/netprospex-increases-website-visit-duration"> shown</a> a 171% increase in marketing-generated revenue.
Take a look at three core aspects your travel and tourism brand needs to tap into when defining buyer personas.

These are the traditional customer identifications marketers have used for the last century – the physical and social characteristics of your target audiences. 
Standard descriptive parameters include: 
<ul><li dir="ltr">Age</li><li dir="ltr">Gender</li><li dir="ltr">Marital Status</li><li dir="ltr">Income Level</li><li dir="ltr">Family Size</li><li dir="ltr">Hobbies</li><li dir="ltr">Media Consumption Habits</li></ul>
 Apply this core aspect: Understanding the baseline demographics of your target audience is critical to forming a solid foundation for all of your marketing efforts. 
Use this information to:
<ul><li dir="ltr">Define your media buying platforms and targeting parameters.</li><li dir="ltr">Influence your creative decisions (you want to mirror your target audience as best you can).</li><li dir="ltr">Set the imagery you use on your website. </li></ul>

(1) Who your audience members are

Taking it a step beyond traditional customer demographics, you next need to form a clear understanding of the motivations of your ideal customer. What problems are they trying to solve through your brand? 
Standard descriptive parameters include:
<ul><li dir="ltr">Fears: What trepidations do they have about interacting with travel and tourism brands? <ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Wasting their money on a subpar vacation choice.</li></ul></li><li dir="ltr">Aspirations: What do they hope to achieve by interacting with your brand? <ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Building great memories that they can carry through their life.</li></ul></li><li dir="ltr">Before/After State: What change do they want to experience through your brand?<ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Before interacting with your brand, they were stressed and overworked. After, they are relaxed, refreshed and ready to take on the next challenge.</li></ul></li></ul>
Apply this core aspect: The insights you can garner from identifying the desires of your customers can be used to:
<ul><li dir="ltr">Strengthen your marketing copy.</li><li dir="ltr">Improve your campaign strategy.</li><li dir="ltr">Enhance your current offer or service.</li></ul>

(2) What your potential customers want

You know who your ideal customer is. You know what they’re trying to achieve through your brand. The next step is to determine the critical purchasing drivers that convert a potential customer into a paying guest. 
In other words, what <a href="https://union.co/services/data-brand-strategy/brand-identity-messaging">marketing messages</a> do they need to be exposed to for them to pull out their credit card and book that hotel room, buy those tickets or make that reservation? 
Standard description parameters include: 
<ul><li dir="ltr">Level of Social Proof: How big of a factor does social proof play into their purchasing decision?<ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Third-party reviews and user-generated content </li></ul></li><li dir="ltr">Pricing Messaging: How do you describe your pricing?<ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Budget-friendly, low-cost travel options vs. luxury experiences</li></ul></li><li dir="ltr">Guarantees: What guarantees does your travel and tourism brand offer that can help users feel more secure when committing to a purchase? <ul><li dir="ltr">Example: Refund policy or incremental weather guarantee</li></ul></li></ul>
Apply this core aspect: Use the understanding of your buyer personas' buying triggers to:
<ul><li dir="ltr">Influence your site content.</li><li dir="ltr">Strengthen your calls-to-action.</li><li dir="ltr">Improve your pricing strategy.</li></ul>

(3) Why your ideal customer makes a purchase

Strong campaign performance comes from ensuring your marketing resonates with your target personas.
Create ads and marketing messages that are relevant to your target personas. Then align those messages and ads to each phase of the customer journey.
To learn more about how to define your travel and tourism brand’s buyer personas, including:
<ul><li dir="ltr">The magic number of buyer personas you need to develop to grow your business</li><li dir="ltr">How to leverage data to build your personas based on fact, not assumptions</li><li dir="ltr">What persona messaging to use during each phase of the customer journey</li></ul>
Download our newest whitepaper: <a href="https://union.co/white-papers/travel-tourism-personas-and-customer-journey">Travel &amp; Tourism Brands: How to Use Buyer Personas and Customer Journey Maps to Increase Revenue</a>.

Improve marketing campaign performance with persona knowledge

Valtech + Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.

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