Customer Personas
What is a Customer Persona?
A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer from your target market based on data from your existing clientele and new market research. When creating your persona, you must consider demographics, behavioral patterns, motivations, and goals of your ideal target customer. Customer Personas are similar to the police wanted posters, the more detailed your statement, the better off you will be.
How to create Detailed Customer Personas for Your Business
You want your customer persona to include:
- information about who the buyers are
- what they are trying to accomplish (what are their needs)
- what goals drive their behavior
- how do they think and behave
- how do they buy, what process do they go through when making purchasing decisions
- why do they make certain purchasing decisions over others
These customer persona templates have more to do with actual buying behavior as opposed to specific profiling.
How can Customer Personas be Used in Marketing?
Creating specific customer personas allows you to create compelling content that appeals to your target market. It also allows you to personalize your marketing efforts based on the specific segment you are targeting. Additionally, when you combine this information with other information such as which stage in the buyer lifecycle they are in, you can create highly personalized and targeted messages.
Negative Customer Personas
Customer Personas are representations of your ideal target customer, whereas negative personas are those customers you do NOT want to target. For example, this could be customers who can not afford your product or service based on average income. By knowing exactly who you don't want to target, you can narrow your search for your ideal customers. Therefore, by defining and identifying your negative customer personas, you will have a better idea of what your ideal customer persona is. This can help save time and money leading to lower acquisition costs or cost-per-lead, also generating higher revenue from increased productivity.
