What is a buyer Persona?
A Persona is a representation of a segment or group of customers that you have developed based on your understanding of their attitudes and behaviours towards your product, brand, or industry.
In general, a company will create a handful of personas (four is a good average) each symbolising a different segment of the target market. There must be enough of a difference between these personas that it makes sense for them to be separate representations.
Care must be taken in crafting these personas, because they will impact your bottom line.
“How?” you may ask.
Well, in short, if you don’t understand your customers, how do you expect to serve them? How will you create a customer experience that earns brand loyalty and market goodwill?
It comes down to two main points:
- A more personalised service will lead to an enhanced customer experience (CX), which in turn will lead to enhanced brand equity.
- With clear and accurate personas, you can more easily identify and target your ideal customer and expand your market share.
The exercise of designing your personas gives a general direction and a common understanding about who your customer is and how to reach them. This ensures that your whole team is aligned.
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The difference between persona and archetype
There can be confusion in the branding space about the difference between personas and archetypes, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. So, let’s take a moment before we carry on, to discuss what an archetype is and how it differs from a persona.
While archetype can refer to audience segments, it is more common in branding for it to refers to the brand itself. Where personas guide audience segmentation, archetype guides brand differentiation – appealing to the audience through the iconography and character of the brand itself.
So, the interaction between archetypes and personas is the interaction between brands and their ideal audiences.
Crafting personas from data
The creation of customer or buyer personas is as much an art as it is a science. The best personas come from an interaction between qualitative and quantitative data; combing your personal and employees understanding of the market you serve with the raw data acquired from objectively tracked interactions.
Some sources of this information can include:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool
- Website analytics
- Competitor analyses
- Social media insights
- Surveys, interviews and discussions
- Social listening tools
- Products and service reviews
- Insights from customer-facing employees
When you have crafted your personas, consider adding another touch of personalisation to make them more real, and name them according to what distinguishes them from the market. Examples might be names like DIY Dave or Middle Manager Mary.
Mistakes to avoid
As important as personas can be, they can be detrimental if done wrongly which results in poorly guiding your communication efforts!
Fortunately, the most common mistakes with crafting buyer personas are quite predictable.
If you avoid these mistakes, your personas should be an accurate representation of your market:
- Fantasy “facts”: Your personas must be based on something in reality, not just qualities you wish your customers have.
- Stereotypes: Especially in this day-and-age, be aware of your personal biases and make sure you aren’t stereotyping your audience by gender, culture, or anything else.
- Forgetting the customer journey: Whatever your customer journey is, your interaction with your personas will differ depending upon where along that journey it takes place. Make sure each touchpoint reflects the appropriate persona.
- Wrong context: Especially when exploring a market you are not familiar with, remember to keep the customer’s actual day-to-day experiences in mind.
Getting Personas Right with Market Research and Understanding
Are you having trouble identifying and reaching your intended market? Or maybe you’re putting together your own buyer personas and having trouble figuring out how to get started with this fundamental but incredibly important marketing and communications practice.
If so, get in touch with Interact RDT and let us help you to craft accurate personas that will allow for deeper market penetration, enhanced customer experience, as well as niche identification.
Author: Yael Benjamin from Interact RDT
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