Customer Personas : The basics...

After every holiday season tapers off we get inundated with sales data from ecommerce / digital stalwarts across the globe.

The numbers (hopefully) are usually great and most of us would look at them for a good 5 mins. (Well that’s still X times the human attention span)

However these sales numbers and digital conversions which we remember as just another statistic is a result of targeted digital marketing (campaigns, landing pages, adwords, SEM , SEO, retargeting), customer loyalty and lead nurturing programs powered well defined customers personas.

Customer personas are the bedrock of most successful digital efforts and hence, to be heard in the crowded e-space the brands/businesses need to focus on these.

Persona’s are not the invention of the digital age, however digital metrics and speed have enabled better targeting, tracking and tweaking of personas to ensure the right audience is netted every time.

So, what are the basic steps in defining, designing and updating a customer persona?

By Definition - A customer persona is a semi-notional profile of your potential customer based on real life data gathered from reliable sources. The persona thus defined should be granular enough to be usable in every stage of the customer life cycle.

As the definition suggests, personas have to be seeped in real reliable data. At the onset, such precise data points might not be available especially for B2B industries which are new to digital. The broad assumptions hence made should still be derived from available data. As different Persona’s are validated in the real world, more precise personas can be defined and put in action.

Gather data – Gather data from as many sources as possible and rationalize it. Some relatively easy sources of gathering data could be existing contacts database (A DB from existing CRM solution would be near perfect), website registrations and buying history

Conduct or buy online/ offline surveys – There are a lot of websites offering free survey abilities; utilize those to gather some precise information. There are marketing / survey agencies that can also help.

Utilize site analytics, social listening and social media – If you already have a website and have been running some SEM, FB and Linkedin campaigns then that can be used as an effective source of data. Social listening tools offer a good insight as well. Conducting pilot implementations is another step in the right direction

Define key data points for persona – Based on the specifics of your business, define the key attributes for your data. Persona templates are a good way to organize and visually represent what you are aiming for. Some common data points are age, gender, job, salary, location, education, digital proficiency ,goals , challenges etc.

Add additional details – As you launch your persona targeted campaigns, remember that this is an iterative process until you acquire the right balance. So the emphasis needs to be on continuous testing, data assessment and refinement of persona.

Avoid gaps – Hyper targeted campaigns targeted on micro personas are a great way to generate sales but one needs to avoid the persona bubble where only few customers hear and know about your products and services.

Iterating and improving

In conclusion, personas are the secret sauce which will make any digital , lead generation and ecommerce efforts tick both in B2B or B2C and lead to conversions ( call to action) . With some effort these could be defined and utilized to the benefit your org/business..