User Personas: Getting to Know Your Customers
Posted by Tricia Fagan Griffiths on Thu, May 12, 2011
So who are your customers, anyway? You might say that they are small businesses that are in need of a service or product. Nope, too broad. I mean really, who are they? What are their needs, motivations, concerns, goals? Creating user personas for your customers is an increasingly important step in targeting your marketing efforts. As a business owner, you can work endlessly on marketing your product or service. But, if you cast too wide a net and don’t locate and engage your target audience, your efforts may go to waste. So how does one go about creating user personas for their customers? Today, we’ll discuss some tips on doing just that.
For starters, what is a user persona? It is a fictional character that represents your customer. These representations should be quite detailed - including any characteristics that would influence what they think about your or your product. It’s smart to create multiple user personas to represent the different types of users or customers you’d like to attract.
So how do you pinpoint who these people are? For example, let’s say you are a small business consultant specializing in helping businesses adopt more cost-effective strategies. Create a user persona starting there, who would be most in need of your services? Introducing...Dave! Readers, Dave. Dave, Readers. Dave is...
- A small business owner
- Handles all strategy himself
- Used to having to do it all
- Has a very basic website
- 45 years old, married for a very long time, older kids
- Likes to do it his way
- Has heard it all -- and has been burned by people looking to save him money by having him spend money
Once your user personas are created, you can gear all your efforts to Dave.
- Marketing Strategies - What are Dave’s goals for his business?
- Direction for Content Creation - Dave’s a straight shooter, don’t beat around the bush.
- Changing & Building Products - What would make Dave’s life easier? How would your service help Dave?
- Designing Your Website - Dave doesn’t like fuss...keep it clear and concise.
- Researching Keywords and On-page SEO - When looking for a service, what words would Dave use?
- Targeting Social Media - I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Dave doesn’t Tweet - but, maybe he recently dipped his foot in the Facebook waters.
It’s also helpful to put a face with a name - create your personas as actual people, including human characteristics, to help you visualize these customers. FYI - Dave’s balding and not too happy about it. So why are user personas helpful? They help you to identify the priorities of your customers. And those priorities are going to persuade them to spend money or not. User personas are a key factor in creating your marketing strategy. This task can be hard to organize. If you could use help, consider hiring a pro who specializes in marketing campaigns that include creation of user personas. It’s a step that will ensure that your marketing efforts are reaching the right people, with an increase in sales as your proof.
Photo by LuluVision.