A ‘Persona’ is much more than Spanish for ‘person.’ A user persona is perhaps one of the most helpful tools when making a business decision that will have a direct impact on your demographic. It gives your business the ability to market to one single customer who represents your customer base, as opposed to marketing to a million.

Ardath Albee is a B2B Marketing Strategist, best selling author and CEO, she summed up a persona in the most elegant way:

“A marketing persona is a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience.”

Persona must-haves

The first thing to point out is that most companies will have different points that they need to include in a persona. The most important thing is that you can relate it to your business.

Each persona will ideally include:

• Name - Obvious, but important none the less. This can be made up, real, or slightly descriptive. Think ‘Matt the Big spender’ or ‘Frugal-Tom.’

• Image - Helpful to put a face to a name. Try not to use anyone you know or famous people. Someone random, stock images are fine but the key is that this identity is original.

• Motto/Quote - This can simply be something to sum up their overall feel or idea. It might be something they have in their insta bio or tattooed on their forearm, it could even be something on their bedroom wall….Live Laugh Love comes to mind (remember, no judgement).

• General Information - This should include age, sex, location, occupation, education and living arrangements.

• Bio - Their general backstory. If you had to condense their life down to a paragraph, this is where you would put that. How did they get to where they are, what are the headlines from their life? These sort of details will be useful down the line.

• Likes and Dislikes - This will include brands, celebs, TV/Movies. This information is useful when figuring out what influences your target market and what to stay well away from.

• Personality Traits - Highly organised people like to compare prices with value. Sympathetic people may react better to emotional advertising.

• Goals - This can help narrow down your customer’s needs, both long and short term.

As I mentioned, when you start to outline your personas, you may quickly realise that you need some other aspects put in that will be helpful to your individual business. This can include things like the apps and social media platforms they use, their daily routines or their hobbies.

Things to remember

You really want to use real data where possible. If you are a start-up, this may be a little more difficult and you may need to rely on surveys of friends and family but generally speaking, use real data. Speaking of surveys, they are a great way to get inside the minds of your customers in order to build a more accurate persona.

It’s important to not leave it at just one persona, there is always room for more. Using multiple personas is an ideal way of representing different groups in your customer base.

Resources

Hubspot has a really easy tool to create a persona. It's a great entry point to seeing the kind of questions you will need to ask and gain a better overall view of personas.

Xtensio is another site with a helpful free persona tool. They have it laid out pretty easy with this template, all depends on what you need from your persona.

The other option is to build your own. They are not designed to be fancy if your current situation doesn’t require it to be. A simple word doc will do. Having a look at those other examples will give you a good idea of what can go in.

Personas are a great way of helping a brand develop and can sometimes even generate a more niche USP for your brand, so their overall power is not to be overlooked.

Good luck in your persona indevours and feel free to reach out if you need help, that’s what we are here for.