Customer Personas: What, Why, and How

Developing Customer Personas

Relevant content is at the forefront of consumers minds. A national poll shows that 74% of consumers get annoyed when content is not personalized towards them; on top of that, they would do nearly anything to receive content that does interest them.

Customer personas help us relate to consumers as real people and having a thorough understanding of these personas is the driving force for a successful marketing plan.

Customer Personas: Why, What, & How

Why is it so important to have customer personas?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: strategy and campaign are the heartbeats of a marketing plan. One of the most vital aspects of a successful strategy is producing quality content. Quality content is content that meets a need: answers a question, solves a problem, etc.

Which is why putting together customer personas is so important for successful marketing; you can’t produce quality content if you don’t know what needs you should meet.

In establishing personas for your real audience, you establish a baseline to generate relevant content and can keep your current audience interested as well as build that audience.

So what is a customer persona?

By definition, a persona is the aspect of one’s character that is perceived by others, and according to Hubspot.com:

“A buyer(customer) persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

Customer personas are kind of like fictitious characters that represent your goals and define groups of your audience. Consumers desire relevant and exciting content, but they don’t like to have to search for it, so it’s more than just creating customer personas, it’s about understanding those personas as well. Having a deep understanding of your customer personas is critical not only to content creation but also to sales follow-ups and nearly every other aspect of customer acquisition and interaction.

How to create customer personas?

The good news is that it’s easy! Customer personas can be created using many different methods, including surveys and interviews of your current customers or studying the data you have about them already. You should have forms in place on your website that capture relevant persona-building information.

Let’s say for example you own a cell phone repair company. Using forms on your site, you can obtain a lot of information about your customers that will help you build personas and provide them with the content they are seeking. This information may include age, what phone they have, if they’re single, or have children that also have phones. When building personas, the goal is to make them as real as possible. In this particular scenario, you can determine that a high percentage of your customers are moms that are fixing the whole family’s phones. We’ll call her Stay At Home Heather.

Name: Stay At Home Heather

Age: 30-40

iPhone user

Married with two kids who both have cell phones

Decision maker for device repair

Now you’re able to relate to your customers and provide content that meets their needs! Mom Meghan appreciates the relevant content she now receives about family insurance plans, articles on cell phone safety for kids, and more. Not only have you secured her as a customer, but she is now likely to refer you to others and leave reviews about her experience.