Don't kill your business at the start | Ed.5

Customer Personas. 👍

No. Don't exit the tab. You'll want to read this.

Customer personas are a boring and tedious task. But not knowing who your audience is the first step to burning your business to the ground.

You might have the best product or service, beautiful website and an excellent marketing campaign idea. But without understanding your audience and the macroeconomics they are dealing with, you could fall flat on your arse.

So who is your ideal customer? When it comes to marketing and advertising, this is a question you must answer. Knowing who you’re trying to reach with your message is just as important as the message itself. That’s why crafting a customer persona is so essential. A customer persona gives your team a complete understanding of who you are targeting, allowing them to tailor their messaging appropriately. Ready to get started? Let's dive in! I can feel how excited you are for this.

Step 1: Gather Your Information

Before you can build an effective customer persona, you need accurate and up-to-date information about your target audience. You should start by downloading all the demographic data related to your customers and prospects, such as age, gender, location, occupation and income level. Export this from your eCommerce platform, CRM (I use Klaviyo), Social Channels and Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics.

Then take some time to analyse past customers and uncover any patterns that can help inform future decisions. For example, if most of your customers come from one particular region or have similar professions, that should be taken into account when building out the persona.

TIP: Start off with the RFV model. Recency, frequency, value. If you can group your existing customers into RFV first, then analyse each group as above, you will have a clear understanding of your audience.

Who are your advocates? Do you have lapsing customers who haven't purchased for more than 90 days? Who are your high spenders? Who spent low and only once?

Step 2: Define Your Persona’s Goals & Pain Points

Now it’s time to think more deeply about your target audience. What motivates them? What are their goals? What challenges do they face on a daily basis? Answering these questions will give you valuable insights into how best to engage with potential customers and what resonates most with them. It will also help you identify potential “pain points” – problems that can be solved with your products or services – which can be incredibly powerful for marketing purposes.

This also helps with your messaging. Take Ovaltine. They sold a cupful of sleep, not warm malt Milk. Because their customer pain point was gaining sleep. If Ovaltine got it in 1951, you can get it in 2023.

 

Don't sell the product, sell the dream. Pun intended.

Step 3: Create Archetypes To Summarise Your Findings

Once you’ve collected all the necessary data, it’s time to summarise it all in an easy-to-digest format. Try using archetypes – generalised versions of actual people who represent the collective interests of your target audience – for this process. For example, if most of your customers are men between 25 and 35 years old living in urban areas and working in tech jobs, then create an archetype called “Urban Tech Guy” to encapsulate all these details at once. The key here is to make sure each archetype accurately reflects the demographics and motivations of real people while still being easily understood by everyone on your team.

Sometimes generalised archetypes don't work if you have a unique niche business and specific customers. If this your brand, create profile personas instead. Give your persona a name and deep dive into their personality. This will help you when creating campaigns. Lets say you called your persona Sarah... (what a great name!)

Ask yourself. Does this campaign appeal to Sarah's pain points? Do we help Sarah learn and grow with this content? Does Sarah feel like she has had a good experience with this information?

Then, you will start to create content and think... 'wow, that is soooo Sarah'.

You get my drift.

Persona Profile template - Steal this.

Crafting a customer persona isn't something that should be taken lightly; it's one of the most important steps in any successful marketing strategy. By gathering accurate information about potential customers and summarising it into easily digestible archetypes, businesses can gain invaluable insights into their target market – insights they can use to craft effective messaging that resonates with audiences on both an emotional and rational level . So don't wait; start building out those personas today!