A persona is a fictional character that represents a customer, a target audience, or a specific group of people in a single model. By creating a persona, you can visualize your target audience. This allows you to best put yourself in your target audience’s shoes. It also helps you be concrete and specific about who you’re going to reach out to.
Who is a persona relevant to?
If you want to create a customer journey map, there are several ways to do it. One of those ways is to start with a persona. With this persona, you can:
Identify Your Ideal Customer
This persona represents your ideal customer. This is the customer you may not have yet, but would like to have. This is useful for a company that has just been founded and may not have any customers at all yet. It can also be useful for a company that already exists but would like to start serving a different target audience.
View your current customer
This persona represents your current customer. This is useful for a company that has been in business for some time and can’t pinpoint where customers drop off in the buying process. It’s also useful for a company that wants to start focusing on a new target audience but isn’t yet sure what matters most to that audience.
Defining Multiple Target Audiences
Sometimes you’ll find that a single persona isn’t enough. In that case, you can create multiple personas. Generally, you shouldn’t create more than four. This ensures that you remain specific and focused and that you leave out all irrelevant information.
Making Your Business Personal
With this persona, you give your own company a face. It makes it more human and personal. It also makes it easier to put yourself in your company’s shoes. That way, you can establish a strong mission and vision.
When creating a customer journey map, it’s both efficient and necessary to choose a single target audience. If you find that you have multiple target audiences, you can create multiple maps so that you can serve all your customers based on their specific needs.
How do I get the information for my persona?
There are various sources you can use to gather information for your persona. Which sources you use depends on the “age” of your company—that is, whether you’re a startup or an established business. Some ways to gather information include:
- Market Research
- Buy Information
- Analyze your customers: identify who the customers are who come into your store; what do they have in common?
- Surveys: Ask customers who visit your store to fill out a survey, for example
- Your own experience
- View the statistics on your website.
- Analyze your competitors; do they target the same audience? You can learn from that.
What information do I need to create my persona?
Your persona should serve as a description of your target audience. It’s like a resume for that person. So you’ll need all kinds of general and more specific information. For example:
- Name
- Gender
- City
- Age
- Nationality
- Education
- Driver’s License
- Children
- Marital Status
- Income
- Source of income
- Hobbies
- Likes
- Hates
- Search the Internet for
- Watches on TV
- Favorite TV show
We have a standard template for personas. Download it here.
Example of a persona
In this example, I’ll use a (fictional) ice cream shop as my starting point. I own a shop in Amsterdam called DiscoDip that sells vegan ice cream and delicious frozen yogurt. Lately, the number of customers has been declining. I want to revamp my marketing and strategy. I’ve been in business for a while now, and I realize it’s time for a fresh perspective. After all, I’d like to see my business grow again.
For a while, I kept track of who came into my store. I also handed out surveys to my customers, which they filled out in exchange for a free ice cream. On my website, I could clearly see who was ordering frozen yogurt for home delivery. All in all, I was able to collect quite a bit of demographic data.
Emma, 27, Amsterdam
- Gender: Female
- Nationality: Dutch
- Education: Bachelor’s degree (HBO)
- Driver’s license: No
- Children: No
- Marital status: Living together
- Income: average
- Source of income: works part-time at a PR consulting firm
- Hobbies: working out, hanging out in the park, going to the movies, cooking
- Likes: healthy living
- Hates: smoking, drugs, partying
- Search the internet for: healthy recipes
- Watches on TV: Netflix
- Favorite TV show: Helemaal het einde
Emma is 27 and lives with her boyfriend in Amsterdam. She recently graduated and now works part-time at a PR consulting firm. She enjoys her job. She has great coworkers and connects with them on the topic of a vegan lifestyle. In her free time, she enjoys going to the park or the movies with friends. She loves sports and cooking. She considers a healthy lifestyle very important. She hates smoking, drugs, and other unhealthy habits. When she’s not hanging out with friends or working out, she likes to search the internet for new healthy recipes. On rainy days, she likes to watch Netflix. Every week, she watches “Helemaal het einde.”
Now that you’ve created this persona, what do you do next?
Now that you’ve created a visual representation of your target audience, you can focus on what matters most to them. You can do this by mapping out a customer journey. Fill in the details, basing your customer profile on the persona.
Do you have questions, or would you like help developing your strategy? Would you like to get started on a persona or a customer journey yourself, but are having trouble figuring it out? Then please contact us. We can provide specific advice tailored to your situation. You can reach us at info@studiopiranha.nl or by calling 070 222 60 90. Also, check out how you can increase sales by creating a customer journey for your business.
