The process of analyzing & building customer personas is not too much different from the process of selecting & placing body parts while creating your newest version of Mr. Potato Head. You must identify each persona, then build it out by figuring out what “parts” make each one unique. Of course, there will be aspects of some personas that are shared.
Who are your personas?
The first step to working on your personas is to identify them. For me, a mental walk-through of the business processes of a business tends to produce a fairly complete list.
Once I’ve worked through that process, I’ll assign them role-based names (such as junior astronaut, senior astronaut, or launch manager). Next, I’ll discuss the roles with someone intimate to dealing with the clientele in question. Sometimes you can talk to one person and get a good assessment of your persona list.
Discuss your persona list with front office / sales people, service / field techs / deployment teams, admins and managers at each level. When creating a list of personas, don’t assume that you know them all simply because you run the place.
Getting feedback from staffers who talk to / email with these folks on a daily basis is critical to proper identification of each persona. Your front line people in each area work with these folks every day. Their familiarity will help you accurately describe, critique, and reflect on the qualities / properties of the personas you’ve built. Multiple viewpoints across your staff will fine tune the mental sculpture of them that you’re creating.
Putting the lips on each persona
Selecting the lips to stick onto your Mr. Potato Head is fairly simple. The work to break down the different traits, habits, wants, needs, communication requirements and other aspects of each persona your business works with isn’t.
It’ll pay off when you write emails, phone scripts, letters, forms, ads and other communications intended to optimize your interaction with each persona. Optimization is really about achieving a “message to market match”.
I should clarify the “… to market” part of this. Normally when I mention message to market match, I’m referring to the market of people who buy what you sell. From that high level perspective, your market could be “people who want to buy or sell a home“. Personas drill down on that.
When producing a list of personas from your market, we focus on market subgroups. A persona like “empty nester couples between 50 and 62 who are downsizing” is a good example – and is a good bit narrower than “people who want to buy or sell a home”.
The group of people on the list of folks who want to buy or sell a home include:
- the aforementioned empty nesters
- millennials
- newlywed couples
- 25-35 couples with kids looking for room to grow
- single folks who want an ownership experience at a waterfront property without the need to deal with yard work
- aging couples who want a single story place that will be suitable for keeping them out of a retirement home for 10 more years
- vacation home buyers
- rental real estate investors
… and so on. If real estate is your thing, you can probably add to that list without much effort.
Why are personas necessary?
You want to break your customer / prospect base down to this level of detail soso that you don’t communicate with each group using the same message. A real estate ad with a couple of 50+ aged people in the photo might not attract a couple with young kids who are looking for their first home. Likewise, the reverse could also be true. The imagery *and* the words matter. It’s tough to attract anyone when you use a message they doesn’t concern them.
When you do the work to identify what is unique to each of these personas, then you can more easily decide how to communicate with them (Instagram, Facebook ad, postcard, etc) AND what to say when you do.
Winning at this almost never looks like “I created one ad and it attracted everyone.” Creating the right conversation with the right group is more work. The reward is that conversations with better context produce better results. Further, fine tuning your message will reduce the amount of time you waste on people your business / products / services aren’t a good match for.
Finally, don’t forget to use your personas to refine messaging to existing clients.
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