A company can never know its customers too well; that's why some are going so far as to create fictional – yet amazingly accurate - personas.
Personas are archetypal users that represent the major categories of people who buy a company's products and/or services. Many large consumer companies have embraced personas as a memorable way to segment and envision the people they serve. Personas energize companies by focusing everyone in an organization around a common view of the customer. Not surprisingly, business-to-business (B2B) companies are beginning to test the power of personas.
Personas are not profiles, they are more extensive and typically use a narrative style to convey enough details to help marketing and sales easily relate with specific customer types. They always include a photo of the representative customer and a name for the person.
For an auto maker selling to consumers, "Butch" may be the blue-collar guy in his mid-30s who watches a lot of football and thinks he needs a Hemi. "Cindy" might be the newly minted college graduate looking for an economical but sporty subcompact. "John" is a middle manager at an insurance company with three young kids who needs a family van.
For a B2B software company, "Hillary" might be the CEO screening for ROI; "Craig" the IT guy worried about the software's stability, and "June" the user whose productivity will hinge on the software.
Personas start with generalities like these and then get a lot more specific to bring the representative character to life. They include demographic data and other characterizing elements such as career concerns, personalities, attitudes, motivations and objectives. The extrapolation must be true to the overall customer category. UK Internet consultant Textor suggests identifying each persona's role in the buying cycle, scripting questions the persona might ask in a sales situation, and listing trigger words that might inspire him or her.
Companies are developing personas because they know it's foolish to lump all customers together under a common umbrella without acknowledging major groupings. They understand that customers can't be reduced to broad demographics – e.g., average age, education, ethnicity, family status – nor statistics. They intuitively understand the value of really knowing their customers and empathizing with their motivations – the better to sell and serve them. But rather than trying to know each and every customer (an impossible task for most), companies get to know the handful of proxies that represent them.
"Persona-based marketing is part Hollywood characterization and part business analytics," says M.H. Mac McIntosh, an acknowledged authority on the subject. "This concept can help you as a business-to-business marketer by creating a vivid, tangible picture of your best prospects or customers, and then sculpting a marketing message that's pertinent to their concerns, and moves them to inquire and buy."
"It's a rigorous approach to getting the right information about your customer to best speak their language," David Rosen, senior vice president of Loyalty Lab, recently told Multichannel Merchant.
Personas were originally conceived as a means to better architect Web experiences. Companies wanted to anticipate how customers would approach their Web sites and what detail they'd be looking for. Now personas are used across the board in marketing, search and PR.
Personas are more than just New Age navel-gazing. Persona characteristics clearly and logically dictate real-world marketing decisions. If your persona is 50-years old or better, for example, you might want to make sure your written communications use a font on the larger side. If your persona is a busy senior executive, you can't expect them to kick back with a 25-page white paper. If the persona has upscale tastes, don't schedule a power lunch at Denny's.
Personas unify companies around a common customer framework; as such they help shape key discussions and decisions, from messaging and online marketing to product design and advertising.
Most companies create personas by first conducting research, including customer surveys, focus groups, usability testing and even high-end statistical analysis. McIntosh suggests that marketers ride along on sales calls as part of their groundwork. Current customers and prospects should be included in the research. Try to uncover consistent patterns; you are looking for common expectations, opinions, challenges, and psychological motivations. As a general rule, it makes sense to interview 10-30 customers/prospects for every major persona category.
Here are tips for getting started:
- a group of employees who interact with your customers and prospects, e.g., customer service, support, salespeople, channel partners and senior executives – those on the front lines. Gather their perspective but be wary of internal bias or myopia.
- customer/prospect research.
- and propose a few archetypal personas.
- of company each works for; characteristics could potentially include: industry, size, vertical market, competitive environment and corporate culture.
- and their behavior with as many attributes as possible to get a full, rounded picture of who this person represents. This should include demographic data; job focus; challenges they face; how the person fits within their organization; skillset/competency levels; key job objectives and responsibilities; attitudes; key behaviors; what would make their job more effective; how their time is typically spent, etc.
- and bring these all together under one persona. Create personas for each major customer grouping.
- ; find a photo; name the customer.
- on each persona.
- , think about resources this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this problem: white papers, articles, Web sites, news releases, speakers, online communities, etc.
- about the way personas will guide different functional areas within the company and engage key players so they embed this unifying view of the customer in their own decision making.
How many personas do you need? There's no single number of personas that works best. Go with whatever number accurately captures the major categories of customers; keep the total number as manageable as possible. Few is better than more.
One word of caution: Despite all your work to typify customers, experts warn against stereotyping. That means you've got to go beyond quick and dirty brainstorming and take it seriously. Your personas need to be as complex as the human beings they represent.
- Steve McGrath
