Customer Personas are a model of an ideal customer. A customer persona includes demographics (gender, age, geography, and job) as well as psychographics (motivations, wants, needs, and preferences).

The exercise of creating a customer, like “Sally,” based on the attributes of your ideal customers helps to clearly define and segment them for your team.

It’s important to create a narrow focus on your primary types of customers so that you can serve them well. We narrow our focus to the types of people who are the right fit for your product or service.

Customer Interviews

When developing customer personas, here are some of the questions that we consider.

• What is their motivation to switch from a competitor to you?
• Where do they spend most of their free time?
• What does an average day for them look like?
• Which problems can you help them solve?
• What do they value most?
• Where do they go for news?
• What are their most common objections to your product/service?

How many customer personas?

It really depends on how many types of customers you service. A company like IBM has so many products and services they would need dozens. However, smaller, less complex businesses—organizations with between 10-100 employees—typically only need between three and five.

Customer Persona Names

Giving your persona a name to go along with their personality and background helps make them easier to think of as a real person. Whatever it is you want to convey, when creating web pages, articles, videos, or presentations, imagine you’re speaking directly to Sally. Once the work is done, always ask, “Would this be meaningful to Sally?” If not, then start over.

Market Segments

Marketing materials and advertising can be written and targeted to each persona you have identified as a potential customer. Market Segmentation increases sales and conversion rates because it helps your different customer groups see themselves in your advertising.

Imagine you sell gutters. Your market research tells you that 80% of all gutters are sold either to married men between the ages of 25-45 or to general contractors who are 45-60. Even though the product (gutters) is the same, you would need to create different marketing content to resonate with each group.

If you would like id8 to help you with a methodical understanding of your customers, email info@id8agency.com and ask to set up a meeting to discuss the process. We’re excited to meet you!