How to Create a Persona and Find Your Ideal Customer
A user persona is a term that keeps popping up in articles about content marketing. A persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience. While your persona is fictional, it’s based on your own research into what your existing and/or desired audience looks like.
Content
- What is a persona: Creating your ideal customer
- Persona example and template: Meet Sally Thompson
- A persona in a step-by-step process
- The impact of creating a persona
You’re identifying your ideal customer
While your persona is fictional, it’s based on your own research and demographic segmentation. You know exactly what your persona looks like—where he/she lives, works, how much money he/she makes, how many kids, what kind of car, etc.
When you’re writing a product description or a blogpost, you’re directing it to that persona, and it becomes easier to market to that demographic because you now understand the underlying socioeconomic landscape. If you haven’t developed a persona, spend some time doing this. It’s a valuable exercise. I have several personas and I have named them.
A persona example: Meet Sally Thompson
The following persona is created from a template. It identifies the five fields you’ll want to flesh out.
- Sally Thompson is a 48-year old financial advisor who is looking for new clients. Her most immediate pain points?
- Her rockstar daughter is a sophomore at Stanford.
- Recently divorced, she also has a mortgage and needs to be saving for retirement.
- Anyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area knows that it takes a lot of money to live here!
Sally is really good with her loyal clients.
- She’s not good at finding new ones.
- She’s not a good networker, and she knows she needs to have a better online presence.
- Her goal for next year is to increase her earnings by $10K.
Creating a persona should be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy
- Research. Talk to your customers. The number of interviews you need to gather the information will be different in each case. The recommendation is to interview 5-30 people. With some critical mass, you’ll start to identify trends. You’ll notice that you get very little or no new insights after a certain point and you can stop your interviews. If interviews aren’t realistic, interview people who directly communicate with these customers instead.
- Use other sources to back up your research. Use Google Analytics or other data sources to validate your findings.
- Segment your audience. Not everyone’s going to fit into one category. Group them because you’ll want to be marketing to them in different ways. The attributes should describe what affects a person’s behavior in certain situations. Give your personas meaningful names—this helps validate this experience.
- 4 Describe your persona’s background. Look for insights that might drive empathy and contain information about your customer, such as job titles and major responsibilities.
- Define your persona’s goals. See how your goals align with the goals of your customers.
- Define motivations and frustrations. By identifying your customers’ pain, you can reach them more effectively and, ultimately, boost loyalty.
These are the basics of your persona
You can continue to drill down and add more detail–skills, touchpoints, the technology platform that your Persona uses, quotes, etc. By continuing to build out this information, you’re creating a robust profile that is becoming factual. My own persona is very vivid to me. It’s a woman with a name and an image. I see this person while I’m developing a marketing plan or other content marketing strategy. I think of my persona as I write a blogpost, for instance, and I ask myself if this is a topic that’s going to enlighten her or prove to be meaningless.
Creating a persona should be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy
Get to know your persona and have some fun with this. One of my colleagues has totally decked out her persona in designer clothes and accessories that she changes by season.
Her persona is kind of her North Star that she uses as a reality check. When I produce a blog, presentation or other communication, my first response may be that it’s great. I can come back the next day and realize that I completely missed the boat. I think about my persona to evaluate if it’s appropriate for that specific market.
When presenting, talking about or referencing your persona in writing, communicate as though they are real people, people that you know. Express it like you are talking about a friend. The way you present your deliverables is key to ensuring your vision’s consistency.
UX designers are using personas to define and design digital products
Designers are increasingly using personas to help make interface design decisions. They’re evaluating behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes and background information, as well as the technical environment in which a persona operates. They also take context into consideration. If they’re developing a new banking app, they need to know the user’s level of financial sophistication.
Make your persona a real person
Knowing customer demographics and behavior patterns means that you’re marketing to the right people. We can help you create a persona and marketing strategy.
