How and Why to Build a Persona

WHAT IS A PERSONA?

A persona, sometimes called an avatar, is a model, representation or archetype of a customer that represents a set of behavioral patterns, goals, attitudes, needs and values.   Behaviors, attitudes, and motivations can be shared independent of traditional demographic segmentation approaches, such as age, gender, education, and other stereotypical categories.

PURPOSE

The purpose of developing a persona is to step out of yourself and look at the world through another’s eyes.  You have to know how they think.  You have to know their story.  It isn’t just whether they need shoes or want to support animal rights.  You have to know the kinds of mental models or metaphors that live inside their brains.  Developing a persona helps you develop empathy for your customer in an experiential way.  So you can FEEL what it’s like to be them.  This shift changes how you deliver content, products, and services.

VALUE OF A PERSONA

There are several benefits to developing a persona.  The collaboration between different parts of your team or organization can create better understanding and empathy across all members, not just for the customer.

• Increasing empathy for the customer lays the foundation for the respect that will be felt through all your customer touchpoints.
• Articulating the persona means that the team has to articulate their assumptions in very specific ways, exposing differences necessary to find consensus and commitment
• You know what you’re measuring
• The customer-centric point of view can also highlight market opportunities and suggest system changes in how you provide service, communicate, or even the products you offer.

HOW DO YOU USE PERSONAS

• Introduce your personas to your team or organization
• Provide visual tools and activities to make the personas feel real
• Use the persons to initiate a conversation about the consumer in a new way.

8 STEPS TO BUILDING PERSONAS

1. DEFINE YOUR GOAL

• What is the persona for?
• Who will use it?
• What is your goal?  Sales? Product development?  Customer Service?

2. DEVELOP AN AD HOC OR PRELIMINARY PERSONA

• Create a persona that encapsulates your assumptions about who your audience is–without doing research.
• This directs your next steps and provides an opportunity for collaboration if assumptions among the team don’t match
• Start thinking about the psychology that drives your persona.  Go beyond what they do or buy, think about why and how it makes them feel.

3. FIND THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

• Use the assumptions to test the accuracy of your ad hoc persona – if you were going to interview your persona, what would you ask? What would help you to understand her better as a person, not just a person who buys your toaster or gives money to your shelter.

4. RESEARCH

• Research your persona to test your assumptions.   Use your questions to guide your query, but always be sensitive to themes and needs you may not have thought of that that need further digging.
• Qualitative research can provide insights to test more broadly quantitatively.  See Listening to Your Customers’ Stories.
• Explore multiple sources of information.  There are many sources, depending on time, skills, and budget, from surveys and qualitative analysis of social media content to focus groups and in-person ethnography, such as “living” with a customer to observe their daily life.
• Cast your net wide.  If you market Pampers, don’t just search for “diapers,” search for the things that new mothers are thinking and worrying about.

5. DATA ANALYSIS

• Qualitative themes and insights from textual data from interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and social media content using content and thematic analysis
• Surveys and big data scraping that generate numbers (either scales or frequencies) require quantitative analysis.  Be careful developing your survey questions to avoid unconsciously promoting your assumptions rather than listening to the consumer.

6. SET ASIDE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND USE DATA TO ADJUST YOUR PERSONA

• Use data results to test and adjust the Ad Hoc persona. Don’t invest too much in having “gotten it right” – look for discrepancies.  In some cases, you may discover a whole new persona.

7. TRANSLATE EXPERIENCE TO STORY

• We all have stories. They are how we make meaning of life.  Once you have data, translate it into a narrative so you can understand the emotional and practical nuances of the customer’s story.  The story allows you to visualize the customer journey and identify important touchpoints.
• Map out your customer’s journey visually – make sure you include the things that trigger the decision to look as well as the experience after purchase.
• Develop an empathy map

8. DEVELOP A STRATEGY

• Use what you’ve learned to develop a strategy based on your persona’s needs.  Things to include:
• How each element of your strategy relates to who she is and how she feels
• How to best reach your customer.  Revisit the Journey Map to find the best moment to connect.

CONCLUSION

Creating a persona has many benefits:

• Articulation of Goals and Improve Decisions
• Identification of the consumer’s behaviors and/or actions that are most important
• Determining spending priorities
• Defining expected behaviors and success measures
• Expose misconceptions about market segments
• Stop design debates
• Focus efforts
• Improve marketing messages, programs and distribution channels
• Ultimately, it makes your company or organization more customer-centric. This is essential in a world where customers don’t want to be “sold” – they want relationships they can trust

Silver lining:

Persona development allows you to be both empathetic and strategic.   Not only will you achieve better results in your campaigns, but empathy has a halo-effect that delivers many benefits—not only does it allow you to feel what others are feeling, but it makes your life more meaningful.  Empathy lowers stress, helps relationships (not just with your customer) makes you feel more connected to others by dissolving barriers, and makes us better leaders and colleagues.

See Audience Engagement: Why Use Personas?