Do you know Your ideal customers? Who already buys from you and who should use your services in the future? In order to be able to design your marketing online and offline as efficiently as possible for these customers, the concept of the Customer Persona. Learn what it is and how to create a Customer Persona here.
What exactly is a customer persona?
Customer Persona loosely translated means "personified customer" and describes the typical customers of a company. The customer persona is thus a further development and specification of the concept of the target group. While the Target group describes a crowdwhose members share similar characteristics, the customer persona is a single (fictitious) person, a kind of prototype.
This person combines among other things Typical demographic characteristics, Wishes and Problems of the real customers in themselves. Instead of customer persona, some also use the term Buyer Personawhich describes the same thing. The concept goes back to the US software designer Alan Cooper back.
Advantages of the Customer Persona compared to the classic target group
Anyone who has a customer persona created for their marketing has a concrete person instead of a less tangible set of people in front of your eyes. This makes it much easier to develop strategies and concrete measures that are tailored precisely to this model customer.
As a marketer, you know the Interests, characteristics and motivation of the customer persona and can respond precisely to it. For each idea, you can simply question whether your ideal customer feel addressed by it would.
The abstract characteristics of the target group become concretely understandable thanks to the customer persona. This makes it more likely that your Message penetrates to potential and existing customers.
At Content Marketing as well as in inbound marketing, it helps to create the customer persona.
Create Customer Persona: Use our template
To make it easy for you to create a suitable customer persona yourself, we have created a Template has been developed. With its help, you can clearly compile all the important information about your perfect customer. The profile has the following components:
- Name
- Image
- Demographic data
- Background
- Problems & Goals
- Motivation
- Frustration
You should use the template as Fill in completelyto understand the ideal customer as well as possible. While most categories are based on concrete data you can freely choose the name of the persona as well as its image. This helps to make the collected data appear more human. A concrete invented person with name and image is easier to conjure up than a collection of attributes.
Select a photo or graphic of a person that visually matches your Presentation of the ideal customer fits. Here are not only Gender and Age important, also about Clothing, hairstyle and appearance, for example, can be important Values and interests of the person visually transport.
Possible sources for a picture of the customer persona:
- free stock photo databases like Pixabay or Unsplash
- a photo or illustration, made by an employee of your company
- Image material from your company archive
While the description of your customer persona will usually be simply a internal guideline used, but you should make sure that you own the image rights or that the rights to the photo or graphic used are free.
Possible data sources for your Customer Persona
When you create a customer persona, you can't guess, but you need as much as possible reliable and accurate data sources. Evaluate them carefully. If you have been on the market with your company for a longer period of time, you have many different sources to choose from and are often not aware of them. Use, for example:
- Your web analytics tool like Google Analytics or Piwik
- Data from your customer relationship management system
- Online reviews
- Feedbackthat existing customers have submitted, for example, by e-mail or in person.
- Discussions with employees who have direct customer contact
- Results of market research studies
- Assignment of customers to Sinus Milieus
If it is possible for you financially and in terms of time, you should also direct surveys among your existing customers and/or conduct your own Market research operate. If you are setting up a new company and want to create customer personas from the start, you can also use these methods. In addition, you can evaluate publicly available customer data from the competition.
Evaluate data for the customer profile
It makes sense to collect data from as many sources as possible. This way you get a diverse and accurate picturewhen you create a Customer Persona. This huge amount of information cluster You now: look for recurring patterns and commonalities that are critical to prospects and repeat customers. For example, find out:
- Which Needs satisfy your customers with your product or service?
- Which Problems solves your offer?
- What do your customers expect from you?
In addition, find out what your Customer Persona motivated and what they frustrated. This will teach you how to engage your customers in a positive and purposeful way instead of scaring them off. Decisions are almost never made solely on the basis of facts. The emotional level is at least as important. That's why the profile of your fictitious customer shows you not only what he wants, but also how you can convince can.
You now use all the characteristics that make up your customer persona for your content strategy. Whether it's social media, traditional billboard advertising, or an email campaign:
From now on, your customer persona is the basis for all marketing activities. This way, you succeed in creating a consistent and convincing strategy.
Create a Customer Persona - or several?
Only extreme specialized suppliers have Exactly one Customer Personathat they would like to address. Most companies have a broader customer base, where individual personalities and interests may well differ. Therefore, evaluate your data carefully and identify the different types of buyers.
But be careful: there should not be too many customer personas.
Then it is hard specific touchpoints for the Customer Journey design and your employees will quickly, due to the amount of data of the various personas overloaded be. As a rule, therefore, are about Three to five customer personas recommendable. You don't have to address every single real customer individually. Even customers who differ in their demographic characteristics can show similar motivations, for example. Therefore, they can be grouped into a customer persona.
Conclusion: How to create a customer persona
With the help of our guide as well as the template you can create your Create Customer Persona can. Keep in mind that your typical customers may well be develop can - a company is also rarely rigid. That's why it can make sense from time to time to Question profiles and revise them if necessary or to supplement.
