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The dictionary ... or at least the one I have on my desk ... gives several definitions for 'persona' (the singular of personas) but the one I like is the simplest one of all ... "a person".

And the persona or personas that I want to talk about are people ... possibly almost real people ... they're people that are created to help you sell whatever it is that you're marketing.

Now if you don't have a persona or personas then there are companies out there that will produce them for you. Yep that's right ... there are companies out there who will produce people without much effort from you.

These guys will look at what you're selling ... they'll look at your stats ... they'll look at other free or commercially available data and then they will create personas that match the average person who buys from you. They'll give the persona a name ... an age ... a place of residence and they'll even throw in an education level, a job description and an average salary too. You want to know what car a person drives? That's not a problem either

You can also expect to get information on your persona's marital status, information about their kids and information about their lifestyle too. Of course that's all going to cost you a heap of money ... professionally designed people don't come cheap but there are plenty of big and medium sized businesses who are prepared to pay the money to get the personas that they need.

Before you get the wrong impression I should say here that these professional companies that are building personas aren't building an army of Jason Bournes ... or any other spy or agent you can think of. When you buy a persona you don't get fake passports, dodgy driver's licences or anything else that goes with a fake identity ... what you do get when you buy a persona is an extremely good representation of the average person who buys what you're selling.

And why do you need something like that? Because when you know who you're selling your products to and you know what motivates them and their families you get a much clearer picture of how you should target your marketing.

You begin to see exactly what they're interested in ... what you can sell them and then upsell them to ... what additional items you can sell them ... what price point they will accept and what price point is just too much for them. You see what buttons you need to press with their wives, husbands and kids so that they begin to add pressure on your target to actually make a purchase.

You also begin to see at what point you can go back to your target market with new products or replacements too.

So what are you doing about personas for your business?

Of course you probably can't afford the high fees charged by the companies that build personas for those bigger businesses but there's nothing stopping you from developing your own personas and there are plenty of free information out there to help you just that.

Start with Google Analytics ... put it on a number of your sites and then look at the data that it gives you. It will tell you with some precision just where your visitors are coming from ... geographically speaking. Once you have that information start looking on Google for information about the towns where most of your visitors are coming from.

Are they wealthy towns? Are they basically suburbs or are they rural towns. Use Google to discover information on what those towns have to offer the people who live there. Look for economic data about those towns ... for unemployment figures ... and other similar data.

Then go back to Google Analytics and see what time of day those people are hitting your sites. Are they surfing from home or from work ... are they surfing from mobile devices. Once you have a fair idea of who, what and where it's time to draw up some of those personas. Give them names so you can identify them more easily.

Now start look at all those figures and then start thinking about the products that you're offering those personas. Are those products a good fit for your personas or are you offering people something that they either can't afford or can download easily because of the device they're using to access your sites.

Once you have your figures and you've developed an idea of what you should be offering those people then you can start writing your copy that should speak directly to your personas. If you have developed a reasonably accurate persona then you should be able to nail your sales because what you're saying in your advertising copy will be resonating with the people you're targeting.

Yep it's definitely time to start developing a few personas ... extra people that will bring more money to your hip pocket.