What is a customer persona?
Customer personas are fictional or semi-fictional characters that are used to describe and evoke a particular type of customer. Otherwise known as buyer personas, user personas, and marketing personas, they provide a useful reference point and insight tool for a variety of sales, marketing, and communication activities.
Customer personas can be used to segment audiences and refine marketing messaging so it is more effectively targeted to the particular needs of a group or individual. When done well, customer personas can help marketers understand their audience better, boost lead generation and customer satisfaction, and increase conversions.
Customer personas are composed of a variety of traits that are informed by robust audience insights such as website analytics, direct customer feedback, and market research. This could include their goals and aspirations, the challenges they face, their attitudes and beliefs, interests and hobbies, their age, job role, education, and location. It contains really any criteria that provide insights into what the customers are feeling so marketers can connect with them more effectively.
How to create and use customer personas—a high-level overview
- data to identify trends or patterns. Perhaps there are content types that appeal to particular customer profiles. Or maybe you can spot patterns in your conversion rates for customers in a specific location, age group, or job role.
- Identify the challenges your audience faces, and what their goals are. Your customer service team and social listening tools can give you some valuable insights.
- Start creating your customer personas. Give each persona a name, age, job title, hobbies, concerns, values, preferred tech - any criteria that will provide insights into the best marketing tactics and activities to use.
- Create a plan for how you can help solve your customer’s problems and achieve their goals. Establish the key benefits for each customer segment and decide what information they need at each stage of the buying cycle, and in what format.
- Map your personas to your content library by analyzing buyer journey data.
- Use your content map to inspire the creation of personalized digital experiences for your customers.
- Keep revisiting your marketing personas as your brand evolves and adjust accordingly.
