How to Develop Customer Personas

Customer personas represent your ideal client for a specific offering, brand, or line of business. They are idealized representations of the people you want to influence through the Buyer’s Journey of Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase.

Begin with the end in mind: who do you want to have as a customer for your offering?

When we develop characters for a script, short story, or novel, we want to create as vivid an image of the character as possible— and so do you when you create this image of your ideal customer.

Start with demographics (which generally don’t cause purchases). These physical descriptors will help you get a better picture of you customer. Describe their:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Education
  • Geographic location
  • Family background
  • Occupation or profession
  • Socio-economic status

Create as much detail as you can—depending on your offering, you may need to add other lifestyle elements that are appropriate to your offering.

The next layer to create for your customer persona is their psychographic profile, descriptors that relate to what motivates them and drives their behavior. You should describe their:

  • Temperament
  • Values and beliefs
  • Talents and skills
  • Motivational focus (loss averse or gain oriented)

Lastly, you must describe why and how your offering satisfies this idealized customer’s Job To Be Done, the progress in their life they are unsuccessful (so far) in achieving, better than any other alternatives they have available.

If you haven’t developed a customer persona for your offering, brand, or line of business, you have limited your ability to influence your audience to move through the journey of Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase, because you have no idea who you are marketing to.

For more information, please visit Provocative Insights.

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