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Influ­encer mar­ket­ing strate­gies involve researching and building a detailed database of crucial industry influencers, utilizing these channels to communicate the company’s message, and promoting quality relationships. If you are serious about learning more as it relates to diving into influencer marketing, here is a helpful list of tips for you.  We recently helped one of our expansion stage port­fo­lio com­pa­nies develop an influ­ence mar­ket­ing strategy—a pow­er­ful and inno­v­a­tive approach that reaps amaz­ing results.

But before you do, take a les­son from our recent experience: you may be mis­un­der­stand­ing a vital piece of the process.

With the port­fo­lio com­pany in ques­tion, we jumped right into the plan­ning ses­sion with a dis­cus­sion about the inputs, con­tent types, chan­nels, and pos­si­ble influ­encers to tar­get. Our con­ver­sa­tion quickly stopped dead in its tracks; we hadn’t dis­cussed one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents to any strat­egy: our tar­gets. Who, exactly, are we tar­get­ing with the influ­encer pro­gram? Who are our per­sonas?

A tar­get per­sona essentially is defined as an amal­gam of char­ac­ter­is­tics rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a mar­ket. Since your prod­uct or ser­vice can’t appeal to every­body (as much as you’d like it to), you take a group of them—a tar­get segment—and iden­tify com­mon traits amongst the group. These then turn into your goals, or your “people.”

In it, four dif­fer­ent types of per­sonas are classified:

1. The pri­mary per­sona refers to the pri­mary user of the par­tic­u­lar inter­face or entire product.
2. The sec­ondary per­sona is another user of the pri­mary inter­face, one for whom we will make accom­mo­da­tions so long as the pri­mary persona’s expe­ri­ence is not compromised.
3. The neg­a­tive per­sona is the user for whom we explic­itly will not add prod­uct fea­tures or capa­bil­i­ties because to do so will pull our prod­uct in a direc­tion we do not want to go.
4. The buyer per­sona represents the buyer (either an exten­sion of an exist­ing per­sona or a non-user) whose biases and needs should be addressed somewhere in the prod­uct and/or the mar­ket­ing material.

You ought to also construct a detailed, defined char­ac­ter from the infor­ma­tion you researched and compiled on your tar­get mar­ket (culled from the mar­ket research you’ve hope­fully executed).This means assign­ing a name, age, socioe­co­nomic class, needs, pain-points, and more. Remem­ber: per­sonas need to be revised on a very reg­u­lar basis. The mar­ket fluc­tu­ates rad­i­cally and often, along with people and their tasted. Assum­ing that a one-time demar­ca­tion of your per­sonas exon­er­ates you from the need to do it again is a sure­fire way to mis­un­der­stand your ever-changing targets.

Now you’re play­ing with “the power of the per­sona.” Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your per­sonas becomes eas­ier when you’re look­ing at your prod­uct and prod­uct plan through their eyes. Pain-point fea­tures are pri­or­i­tized, super­flu­ous infor­ma­tion is cut, the value of your product now stands as the cen­ter­piece of stream­lined prod­uct mes­sag­ing, among other things. Devise your copy­writ­ing using their voice. If you developed your persona well, you should know how they act and speak.

Per­sona dis­cov­ery isn’t as effortless as it may appear—there are many pit­falls that can hob­ble your progress. The biggest and most com­mon mis­take in craft­ing per­sonas is con­fus­ing the con­cept with mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion. Mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion is about divid­ing your mar­ket into sub­groups that are the most applicable and important to your busi­ness. Per­sonas are about human­iz­ing your approach to need-fulfillment. These con­cepts are com­pli­men­tary, and they have mutu­ally exclu­sive principles—but are not iden­ti­cal.

With a solid sched­ule of revi­sions and a con­stant stream of updates, your newly devel­oped per­sonas will help your busi­ness grow and evolve. Per­sonas are the back­bone of every successful influ­encer mar­ket­ing strat­egy; don’t start your endeav­ors with­out them!

Amanda Maksymiw is a Marketing Associate at OpenView Labs, responsible for content creation and strategy for OpenView and its portfolio companies.