What is a customer persona?
Customer personas are detailed descriptions of the main characteristics of a target audience based on customer research. This information is vital and allows you to really understand who your target audience are rather than making assumptions. It should include their demographics, buying behaviours, their problems and drivers and barriers. Your business may have several different types of customers and you may need to develop one persona for each segment of your audience. To help identify them as different customers try giving them names. For example, specialist Sam or conscientious Chloe.
Why are customer personas important?
By completing a customer persona and understanding your audience so you know where to focus your marketing activity. They allow you to create relevant content and messages which appeal to your target audience. You can segment your different audiences and tailor your marketing activities to each segment. For example, if you have a database of contacts which you regularly send newsletters to you, rather than sending all of them the same email you can adjust and adapt the message in the newsletter to fit with each segment. This enhances your chances of your audience engaging with your marketing and developing relationships with them.
How to use customer personas
Developing and using customer personas will support your business to establish exactly who your target audience are. This information is very valuable when developing your marketing activities and creating appropriate marketing messages which appeals & communicates with them at their level. This in turn enables you to filter out any negative personas who are unlikely to buy your products and services. Making your marketing activity more successful.
How to develop customer personas
To complete customer personas initially you can review your database and identify trends. You will need to undertake some customer research through surveys and interviews. If possible, it would be beneficial to complete research with potential customers outside of your database but this can be difficult to achieve for obvious reasons. Your survey questions will need to include demographic questions for example age, gender, location, marital status, income, occupation or education, hobbies, interests and websites they visit. Behavioural questions about the process they go through before deciding to buy and how and where they make purchases. Plus, additional information around any challenges and issues plus what they would dreams and wishes. Once you gathered all the information you can start to identify similarities and trends within your database and segment them if necessary. Once complete this vital information can feed into your marketing content and activity.
Customer persona template.
If you are interested and would like to develop customer personas for your business, I am able to share with you a customer persona template either suitable for B2B or B2C. Just complete my online form or email me and will forward you one.
