Developing and Using Research-Based Personas in Health Marketing and Health Communication

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Personas have emerged from the fields of marketing and user-centered design as an engaging way to bring your end users to life. Personas – although not real people – are a composite of key audience characteristics and preferences. Instead of talking generically about target audiences, a health communication team can refer to personas by name to guide communication decisions and inform marketing activities, content development, or digital strategy.

Methods and Results (informing the conceptual analysis): Personas don’t need to be fancy: they just need to represent your users while being true to the data you have. This presentation will review the key methods for developing personas, including how to: 

• Conduct user research to inform persona development
• Prioritize and analyze qualitative data
• Identify appropriate demographics for each user group
• Use personas effectively with health communication teams to inform marketing activities, content development, or digital strategy

We will present case studies of how we’ve used several personas on behalf of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the forthcoming cross-agency website, healthyhomes.hud.gov. For each case study, we will walk through the process of developing a persona from formative user research and using it for content or website development. We will discuss the importance of using personas as part of a larger, audience-driven strategy for designing health communication and health marketing materials.

Conclusions: When done right, personas are an effective tool for developing a health communication product or campaign that meets the needs of your audience. 

Implications for research and/or practice: There are many benefits to using personas to inform health communication activities, such as:

1. Empathy. The process of conducting user research and drafting personas will help your health communication team empathize with target audiences.
2. Consistent messaging. When your team develops a shared vision of what the end user needs and wants through personas, this vision will foster consistent messaging.
3. Research-driven products. By bringing your formative research to life through personas, you can be sure you’re including data at every stage of the project lifecycle.
4. Better results. Keeping your end users at the center of your planning will lead to a more tailored, audience-centered campaign or product.