If you’re like many companies, you are faced with the challenge of generating more results with fewer resources.  Most likely you  are exploring ways to be more effective when it comes to your marketing and selling. One approach is to create Personas. When properly constructed, personas can be powerful and have corporate wide impact.

Personas are essentially fictitious characters that represent different user types within a customer profile. Best Buy brought personas into the mainstream in 2005 when it started designing its stores around customer personas. Other companies such as AOL, BMW, and USAA, have developed persona initiatives to support everything from customer acquisition to product development. For example, the American Red Cross uses personas to identify people most likely to donate blood.

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Personas Support Customer-Centric Marketing

The reason to invest in creating a persona is to help you to identify and communicate customers’ needs efficiently and effectively. They are the essence of customer-centric marketing. To be of value, these “stand in” customers, need to be based on real customer data.  You will want to give each persona type a name and identity as a way to make it easier for your personnel to identify and connect with prospects. Using personas allows you to better focus your sales and marketing content and training, improving your overall effectiveness. For each persona you will want to customize content and develop messages that resonate accordingly. 

The Basic Building Blocks for Creating Personas

Follow these three steps to start building your personas:

1. Use data: We have found that conducting customer research is the best way to ensure the persona actually represents the customer rather than reflects internal opinion. The purpose of the research is to identify trends or patterns in user behaviors, expectations, and motivations to form the basis of the personas. One of the best ways to gather this data is to interview real customers. This means you or a third party research team will need access to real customers to conduct the research. Your first step will be to decide who to interview. We recommend including current as well as potential customers. Plan to conduct at least 15-20 one-hour long interviews for each persona type. Here’s some suggestions on information you want to capture from your interviews:

• Basic demographics such as age, job title, length of time in position, and length of time with the organization
•  Job responsibilities and what a typical day looks like
•  Tasks that take the longest and those that are the most critical or are performed most often
•  Major frustrations with the job and the organization
• What the person likes best about his/her job
• What teams or which people within the organization the person most interacts with
• Skill levels relating to the job as well as technology
•  How time-poor or -rich the person is
•  Goals, attitudes, and beliefs (conscious and subconscious) Your goal is to uncover customer attitudes and behaviors. Common questions include these:
  • What things frustrate you the most?
  • What makes a good working day?
  • What make a frustrating working day?
  • What will help you to do your job better?
  • How much of your day is spent putting out fires?
  •  What kinds of problems are these fires?

2. Identify patterns and cluster: Once you complete all of the interviews, review the data to find patterns and clusters. These clusters can then help you to define the customer’s attitudes and behaviors. Give each persona a brief description. There is no ideal number of personas; however, we suggest keeping the set small, perhaps three to five primary personas.

3. Generate and validate the persona. After you’ve identified the clusters, you can start creating the personas by adding details from the interviewees’ behavioral traits. Analyze your interviews and select details that stand out such as working environment, frustrations, relationships with others, skill level, and demographics to include in your narrative. When finished, you should have captured information about your customer’s goals, needs, behaviors, concerns, experiences, likes, dislikes, etc. Give each persona a name and a photo or graphic representation. Be sure to take the time to validate your personas. 

Different personas have different buying journeys so revisit your journey maps accordingly.

FAQ:

1. Use data: Conduct research—ideally in-depth interviews with current and potential customers—to uncover trends in behaviors, expectations, and motivations.
2. Identify patterns and cluster: Analyze interview data to find behavioral and attitudinal clusters, which form the basis for each persona.
3. Generate and validate personas: Create detailed narratives for each persona, including goals, frustrations, skills, and demographics. Assign names and visual representations, then validate with additional research or feedback.

• Demographics (age, title, tenure)
• Job responsibilities and daily routines
• Critical and time-consuming tasks
• Major frustrations and job satisfactions
• Interactions with other teams/people
• Skill levels (job and technology)
• Time constraints
• Goals, attitudes, beliefs (conscious and subconscious)

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