Persona mapping is a cornerstone of all good website development and content marketing, but if you’re only developing personas when you get to that stage, it is too late. You’ve already spent endless hours and dollars chasing customers who will never engage with your brand or service. Putting it bluntly, the scattered ‘mass market’ approach doesn’t cut it. If you don’t understand your target market, how the hell do you know how to reach them and how to connect with them, let alone sell your products to them? This needs to happen when you're first completing your lean canvas or business plan, it impacts your strategy immensely. 

In today’s chaotic, rapid, over stimulated and confused market place – every customer wants the same thing, yet no one is talking about it. Every customer wants to feel like a VIP. They want to know you “get them”, your product or service meets their need and their whole experience is seamless. You can’t attract the right customer and deliver the best customer experience if you don’t know who they are. 

People have more options and choices today than ever before; they can make their choices from their own home, or in person. They can also discuss the experience they have had with far reaching impact. There's great reward for getting it right, now more than ever.

The power is most definitely in the customer’s hands, and they know it. Making them feel like a VIP is crucial from a user experience perspective (this applies more than ever to traditional businesses – UX is NOT just for digital businesses), and to do that, you need to know a lot about your target market – what they love and hate, where they spend their time and money, who influences them, what they need and more. It’s no longer about simple demographics. A target market described, as “Middle to senior technologists and Managers in IT, probably male, about 30-45, likes gaming” won’t cut it. You will spend a lot of effort and money, with little or no result.

Everyone in your organisation should believe and work toward this - If you know your target market, you deliver messages and content that is relevant and timely, and if they become a customer and their experience is seamless – your business will grow. Customers become ambassadors and champion your brand, awareness increases, your brand is viewed positively, and repeats sales occur, and marketing investment delivers strong results.

You need to understand your customer deeply, be in their hearts and minds, to be their preferred choice. That doesn’t happen by reading a few high level stats or desktop market research. Yes, these are valuable inputs, but they are only one part of the equation.So don’t wait till you revamp the website to have a robust review of your target market and build personas (you’ll still need to add more detail about the customer’s digital journey to this when you build a site but you need this now!). 

Demographics + Likes and Loves + Behaviours + Needs = a GOOD persona

Here’s a quick "how to" guide for building effective personas:

ONE

Understanding the following two things is the best place to start, but it is just the start.

• Who are your current customers and which ones make the most money for your business?
• How do they find you?

Cluster these and also understand: 

• What are the high level demographics?
• How does this person spend their time?
• What are they passionate about? (love and hate)
• Where do they get information about your industry?
• Who influences them?
• What do they read?
• What social media channels are they on, how often, for how long?
• How do they earn their income?
• What are the biggest pain points for them?
• What do they want to achieve?
• What doubts might they have in regards to your product or service?
• What other products or services might appeal to them? 

While a luxuriously large marketing budget and an outsourced research provider would help – you can do this on a shoe string by grabbing a sample of your target market, and running a focus group, in addition to robust conversations with experts, colleagues, friends and other players in the market. Many companies get it wrong as they reference their own ideas and thoughts as the ‘voice of the customer’ but it is almost always wrong!

A recent study by IBM and Econsultancy showed, however, that there’s a huge perception gap between how well businesses think they are marketing and what the customer experience actually is. "Brands like to talk about how well they know what their consumers want. But the truth is, they’re barely scratching the surface,” says Shareen Pathak from Digiday, referring to this study. 

Olga Rabo articulates this brilliantly when quoting this same study – “Do your readers even think you're relevant? According to that study, 81% of marketers believe that they have a complete understanding of their consumers — and yet, 78% of consumers claim that they feel “misunderstood”. And what’s more, 79% of consumers feel that the information they’re getting from brands is “irrelevant."

Irrelevant. That’s the word most of your customers think when they get an email from you.”

More importantly though, you can see the world through your customer’s eyes therefore you can make sure you engage them in relevant ways, add value, deliver a great product or service and make them feel like a VIP.

TWO

If there were a lot of unanswered questions in Step One, you need to get busy with the following steps  – here’s a quick list of potential sources for your desktop research

• Use all sources for qualitative data – yes, use demographics, use Google Analytics info, whatever resources you have, use them.
• Review your lead sources – who is converting to a sale and who isn’t. Understand what is driving conversion and what isn’t.
• Review your competitors products and what people are saying about them – check out the comments on their social sites and on review forums.
• What social sites are your customers on and who do they engage with? Look for brands they like on Facebook, what they share and read on Twitter, who they follow on Instagram, and what interest boards they have on Pinterest. Also check Quora and reddit and user groups on Facebook too.

THREE

The part that is often missed out - now you need to connect with humans. Sadly, this is the part most people miss, yet for a small investment of time upfront, the rewards will be tenfold.  (Online surveys and phone interviews can work too if your customers aren’t local or you can’t meet in person)

• Review your current top customers – interview them, ask them, know their business, know how they use your product, understand their experience with your competitors, really listen to the good and bad feedback and read between the lines too
• If possible, interview your nearest competitor’s top customers and ask them the same questions above
• Understand your emerging or fast growing customers and do the same as you've done for your current top customers as their needs any be very different

FOUR

Build your persona profiles – aim for between 2-5 personas of your ‘typical’ customer. Describe in detail what they ‘typically’ care about, are motivated by, who influences them, their online behaviour etc – the more detail, the better. Name them, bring them to life.

Personas are not fictional! They are the distilled voice of real customers that represent attributes for a very specific set of people. Sure, they are fictional in the sense that one profile wraps so many attributes, but their problems, needs and interests are very real.

—    Kelly Hungerford, Former Director of Community at Paper.li

FIVE

Get on and do it! But before you do, you’re asking WHY - why do this? Knowing your customer’s needs, hearts and minds gives you the best chance of connecting with them and converting them into loyal, repeat customers and that my friends, is what we all want in business! Yes it is a BIG task. It’s the same as building your financial budget and just as important. 

If you get your targeting right, your marketing is right, your sales efforts are right and your ‘target’ becomes a happy customer faster than ever before. Spend the time and effort now and save time and make more money later. At the end of the day, there is more competition for people’s attention and everyone wants an Uber not a taxi, so be the uber in your industry and invest the time now.

A great example:

From an article written by Olga Rabo, she shares an example for a travel app, like Trail Wallet, which is an expense tracker:

PERSONA - Yvonne Kind, age 22. 

Yvonne is a recent graduate in PR and communications. She comes from a small town in Poland, from a family with a moderate income, and she didn’t get the chance to travel much when she was a child. She went abroad for the first time right after graduation, doing a typical Euro-trip with her elder sister, when she finally discovered her passion for travel. Her dream is to backpack around Southeast Asia.

Yvonne doesn’t have a clear career plan yet (at the moment she’s completing a PR internship in a local agency, but she’s not sure that’s her dream job). She likes to research ways that can help her save a buck or two when she’s on the road. Her favourite blogs are Nomadic Matt, where she gets to read about interesting tips, tricks and travel hacks, and World of Wanderlust, where she finds out about the off-the-beaten-path destinations. She prefers articles written in a colloquial style, narrating about personal experiences.

This is a story of a real person, with real motivations, desires, concerns, fears and aspirations. 

And what do you do with all this knowledge? I’m glad you asked, because I have Adam Connell explaining it in juicy detail: 

When we apply personas to content, that's where the magic happens. It gives us the insight we need to turn a generic article like 'How To Save Money Abroad' into something ultra specific such as 'A Backpacker's Guide To Saving Money In Thailand.' And I'm not just talking about a quick title change – if you have clear personas in mind, the level of specificity will run right through the entire article. Which is great because it's easy to ignore a generic blog post coming through our social media feeds, but when we see one that speaks directly to us, we'll be far more likely to read it.

—    Adam Connell