A persona represents an ideal customer model or a fictional character based on an important user.

The reason setting personas is so highly valued in marketing is that it allows for the development of customer-centric marketing and increases the chances of creating successful products or services.

This article will go over personas and discuss their significance in marketing. Furthermore, it will also provide guidance on creating personas.

What is a Persona?

The ideal customer for a company is someone who trusts it and purchases its product/service. In the case of existing products and services, the buyers themselves serve as the ideal customers. However, when developing new products/services, the ideal customers do not exist yet. This is where personas come into play. Personas represent the profiles of ideal customers and assist in the development and marketing of the product/service by aligning to their preferences. With established personas, marketers and developers can envision how these personas would utilize the product/service.

Setting up a Realistic Persona

Personas should resemble real individuals as much as possible to maximize their effectiveness. Rather than simply classifying the persona as a generic male in his 20s, it is crucial to develop a detailed profile with specific attributes. For instance, a persona could be named Hajime Katoh, a 29-year-old male who is a college graduate and has accumulated 7 years of experience at the company he works for.

Here are a few examples of attributes and characteristics that can be included in a persona’s profile:
 

 
 
The detailed process of creating personas will be discussed in a later section.

Difference between a Persona and Target

Personas and marketing targets are separate concepts, with personas being more specific and detailed than targets. Targets represent segmented groups based on attributes, while personas represent individual profiles. In essence, personas provide a more in-depth version of the target audience. For instance, while your target may be males in their 20s, a persona could be someone like Hajime Katoh, a 29-year-old male, college graduate, with 7 years of work experience and a calm personality.

Why are Personas Important in Marketing?

Personas are important in marketing because it enables us to achieve three key things.
 

 
 
Let’s examine each of these points in detail.

Deepening Understanding of Prospective Customers

By accurately defining personas, a company can effectively engage with prospective customers. Prospective customers are individuals who have not yet purchased or used the product/service but have the potential to do so in the future. The company’s ability to convert prospective customers into actual buyers relies on these efforts.

Through the establishment of personas and conducting persona research, a company can gain insights into the actions that can effectively influence prospective customers to make a purchase. Persona research also uncovers the underlying reasons why prospective customers may hesitate to buy. By leveraging persona profiles, companies can develop targeted strategies, such as understanding the best approach to engage a specific persona and addressing their challenges to enhance their purchase intent.

Having the User’s Perspective

Establishing personas allows marketers and product/service development teams to shift their perspective and consider how personas would think and behave. This enables them to view things from the user’s standpoint more effectively.
For instance, looking at consumers, some prioritize high functionality and are willing to pay a slightly higher price, while others are price-sensitive and prioritize affordability over features. By utilizing personas, it becomes easier to categorize individuals into these different buying behavior categories.

Sharing User Images Within the Company

During the sales process of a product or service, multiple departments such as development, sales, marketing, and advertising play distinct roles at various stages. By utilizing personas, these departments can align themselves together and share a unified understanding of the target users.
Having a shared user image fosters a common understanding within the company, promoting seamless coordination and collaboration between different departments.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Persona Creation

In other words, the benefits of creating personas are the advantages of gaining a deeper understanding of potential customers, having a user’s perspective, and being able to share the user image within the company. They are as follows:

 
 
However, there are also drawbacks to using personas. This includes the cost, time, and effort required to gather information for their creation. Additionally, once a persona is created, it becomes the shared understanding within the company. If the created persona is flawed, it can lead to misguided strategies and decisions. Therefore, creating personas requires meticulous information gathering to allow for accurate development.

How to Create Personas

Personas are created with the following steps:

 
 
We will now go through these step-by-step.

Gather Information

Personas are generated based on real information and profiles of existing customers/consumers.

Since personas need to be created while formulating hypotheses, data that can serve as the basis for the hypothesis is essential. Interview surveys with potential persona candidates from among the target audience of the target product or service are suitable for this.
This is because interview surveys are particularly well suited to digging deeper into a subject’s psyche, to find out why behavior occurred, what factors were responsible for it, and how it made them feel.

To create comprehensive and realistic personas, it is crucial to gather a balanced mix of quantitative data like age, occupation, income, and family as well as qualitative data like hobbies, tastes, values, and family environment. The objective is to identify potential buyers and ensure accurate targeting, resulting in more specific and realistic personas.

Draw Personas from the Information Gathered

After gathering the information, we create a structured framework for the persona by itemizing the collected data. From there additional details can be incorporated based on the below bullet points to enrich the persona profile.

For instance, if you set the persona as a 31-year-old individual working an office job at an apparel company and experiencing back pain and headaches, you can expand on this information by including details like “their back pain and headaches are attributed to prolonged computer use,” “they are seeking methods to alleviate their pain,” and “they are interested in purchasing high-quality equipment through online shopping.”

Once you have developed your personas to this extent, you will have a narrative. Crafting a story allows for a deeper sense of empathy with the personas.
This is how the information we just listed off would look like in such a narrative.
 

 
 
We can summarize the above information as follows:

 
 
Here we have the persona.

Implementing and reviewing the persona

Continuously using the same persona continuously without reviewing them can result in marketing distortions over time.
Regularly reviewing and updating personas is crucial as user needs and the surrounding society are constantly evolving.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought significant changes to people’s lifestyles and behavior patterns, highlighting the importance of treating personas as temporary solutions and continuously refining them to remain up-to-date.

Points to Keep in Mind When Creating Personas

Here are some things to keep in mind when creating personas.

Don’t Make Assumptions

Personas should not be created solely based on assumptions or the company’s ideals. Relying on assumptions and ideals without a solid foundation will result in a disconnect from the true personas and their characteristics. By adopting a biased perspective of the desired customer or product user, you run the risk of losing touch with the authentic persona, leading to a disconnect between your assumptions and the reality of your target audience.

Use Real Information

As mentioned earlier, it is crucial to prioritize gathering accurate information for persona creation, including allocating a budget for conducting interviews and surveys. This emphasis on realistic information ensures the reliability and effectiveness of the personas developed.
Persona creation inherently involves making inferences and assumptions, but it is important that these are grounded in real information. Demonstrating the ability to make such inferences based on the diverse opinions expressed in the surveys adds credibility and reliability to the personas.

Summary

Creating personas enables marketers to adopt a customer perspective, which is essential in a diverse and varied market. Detailed personas are necessary to accurately capture the nuances of different customer segments. Moreover, personas allow for various departments to align, ensuring a shared understanding of the customer and facilitating smoother marketing efforts.

Persona creation requires making inferences and assumptions, but relying on assumptions and ideals can lead to deviations from the true personas. It is recommended to gather realistic information through interviews and surveys to create personas based on actual data.

Continuously refining personas is crucial as society and trends evolve.
By creating products and services that cater to user needs, we can drive sales and profitability. Persona creation serves as the initial step in this journey.