Customer Personas – What they are and where to start

We’re always really careful not to sound like we’re straight out of a textbook but we want to share with you one term we love and that is ‘Customer Personas’. Some people call these ‘Marketing Personas’ and they, quite simply can be brilliant.
The team at Krux, a cleaver bunch say that:
“With personas, businesses can be more strategic in catering to each audience, internalize the customer that they are trying to attract, and relate to them as human beings.”
Simply put, these profiles can provide someone to visualise when creating content because when you can put a personality and character to the person you a targeting its easier to meet their needs and engage them.
This is also true when you’re tackling issues for customer irritants in your organisation – building personas for your audience can help improve the way you solve problems for your customers.

So here’s our beginners guide to creating simple persona pen portraits. Remember you want to know who the person is, what they value, and how best to speak to them. This works whether you’re in a B2C or B2B industry because you’ll always need to build a connection with an individual influencer.

• Start by thinking of key information. If you’re working with other businesses then consider their age, gender, salary, location (urban, rural etc), The level of their education and their household set up (children, animals etc)
• Next think about their values. Who do they trust? What’s important to them? What hobbies and interests do they have which may influence how they feel about who they work with
• Identify their objectives and goals. What will they want to get out of the goods or services you provide. What would motivate them to do business with you? Are there obstacles to you connecting with them?

Next you need facts. Measurement is key and unlocking insight you already hold about your customers will greatly enhance the profiles you’re building.

• Look at your website analytics and social media; where came from, what keywords they used to find you, and how long they spent once they arrived.
• Ask your existing customers questions – conduct surveys, polls and interviews to determine who they are and what they want.
• Involve other people within your organisation. The marketing team will only know a fraction of the information. Teams who interact more regularly with customers will hold valuable insights.

Then make it come alive – give each persona a name, find a photo which you think reflects them. Create boards highlighting brands your customer uses, hobbies they partake in.

And finally – USE THEM. Build your propositions around them, write your content to them, build objection handling with them in mind and don’t be afraid to update them as you learn more.