Customer personas are key for creating ultra-targeted marketing campaigns that will appeal to your actual customers. Read on to discover exactly what they are and the best way to create them.
Everything revolves around your customer.
Absolutely everything.
Without your customers – there is no business. That’s just a simple fact. So your customers should remain at the heart of what you do.
They’re the ones who need or want your product or service. They’re the ones who interact with your company. They’re the ones who buy from you – and the only people that should matter.
So, you should always invest the time getting to know them.
What are customer personas?
Customer personas are a way of understanding your customer.
It’s a way to fill in all the missing information and see things from their perspective. It’s about getting into their head and finding out what makes them tick – so you can better connect with them.
Customer personas aren’t made from guesswork.
They’re made from research and data. They’re made from inside insights and knowledge about what motivates your customers.
Typically, customer personas are made up from elements such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Average Income
- Education Level
- Industry
- Job Title
- Goals
- Challenges
- Values
- Likes
- Dislikes
The key thing about customer personas is that they tell you exactly why each customer buys your product. And if you know this reason, you’ve got the magic secret you need to convert new customers and up your sales.
Not sure why your customers buy? Ask them.
Conduct surveys using sites like Survey Monkey and find out the exact reasons. You might be surprised by what you discover.
How well do you know your customers?
Do you know your customers?
I mean, really know them.
Not in the sense of you having a chat with them if you see them around. Or know people who’ve brought from you on a first name basis.
We mean your typical customer. A stereotype if you prefer.
Do you understand who your customers are? Do you know what they’re interested in? How old they are? What makes them tick? And, most importantly, why they buy your product?
No? Then you don’t know your customers. Not really.
Want to get to know them? Start building your customer personas today.
Start from the core and work outward
Customer personas boil down to one key question:
What problem are they trying to solve?
Your product or service is how you solve this problem.
When you’re creating customer personas, focus on this core problem first. Then work outwards until you build a clear picture of your customer.
Let’s say, for example, you’re a plumber.
Your customer’s core problem could simply be that something is broke and they can’t use their kitchen sink.
You’re not solving it by giving them durable kitchen parts made from the leading suppliers. Or with your 27 years of experience – although these are definitely important and may help set you apart from the competition.
You solve the problem by fixing the sink and returning their home back to normal.
Some of these will appear more straight forward than others – so let’s try another example. This time let’s say you offer cosmetic dental surgery.
Your customer’s core problem is that they want to be happy and confident with their smile.
You’re not solving this problem by straightening their teeth or making them more whiter. You’re solving it by giving them a confidence boost to love the way their new smile looks. Even though this is may be achieved by straightening or whitening their teeth.
Once you understand that, you can expand from there.
Why might they now want to solve this problem? Do they have an important event coming up that they want to look their best for, like a wedding?
And just like that. You’ve got a persona of a bride-to-be, who just wants to look stunning on her big day.
Don’t try to group everyone in a single persona
Your customers aren’t all the same.
They’ll have different motivations and reasons for buying, so it’s important that you don’t lump them all together into the same persona. If you do this, you run the risk of alienating them in your marketing.
Going back to the cosmetic dentist example, let’s say you lump everyone into a customer persona of a woman who wants to feel beautiful with their smile. This will alienate the customer who just wants to replace missing teeth that got knocked out in a sports injury.
So, create different customer personas.
It doesn’t matter whether you have 5 or 15. All that matters is that you understand your customer, so you can build targeted campaigns that really appeal to them.
How customer personas will boost your profits
Once you’ve got your customer personas, you’re ready to profit with ultra-targeted campaigns.
Targeted campaigns are more powerful.
This is because they’re more direct and tell your customer straight away that you can solve their problem. It shows them that you cater to their exact needs and that you understand them.
If you do all this in a single marketing campaign, your customers will be more likely to pay attention, take action and convert. Which means more sales and success for your company.
Let’s use PPC campaigns for an example, again using cosmetic dentistry company.
Instead of targeting your advert, you just went with a ‘one fits all’ approach like the following example:
Although it does list some benefits to the company, it tries to cover so many bases that it doesn’t tell customers that it can solve the exact problem they’ve got.
In comparison, this ad was created based on the bride-to-be target persona:
If you were the bride-to-be, which advert would you click on? The answer is pretty obvious.
Some aspects of a customer persona can also be directly targeted in a PPC campaign.
For example, you can limit Google Ads by age, gender and geographical location. So, you make sure that only the right personas can view the campaign that was made for them.
That means you’re not wasting spend sending the wrong message, giving your business a better ROI (Return On Investment).
Let’s recap: How to create customer personas
Ready to harness the power of customer personas? Just follow the advice in this article and you’ll be set to go.
- Look at your own data and insights. Find out what your customers are like.
- Conduct surveys and get to know your customers.
- Use pop up questions when exiting your site.
- Find out the core problem that your customers are trying to solve.
- And how your product solves that problem.
- Start extending out, looking at what motivates your customers to get the problem solved
- Keep adding information to build out their profile, including age, location, values, dislikes, etc.
- When there’s nothing more you can add, your customer persona is complete.
Remember: don’t try and get every one of your customers into a single persona.
Keep repeating this process until you have a persona for each of your customer types, or you run the risk of alienating customers in your campaigns.
