What Is Persona?
It is necessary to make various preparations before the marketing efforts of any products or services. These preparations must consider different factors such as identifying the target audience and different characteristics of the consumers who demand a product or service. But it might not always be possible to evaluate all the consumers and leads individually. Persona enables the marketers to identify the general characteristics of the consumer groups, their purchasing behaviors and purchasing motivations. So, what is persona and how can you create a persona?
What Does Persona Mean?
Persona can be referred to as market research and classification of individuals who might use a product, service or website based on various common characteristics. Creating a persona is extremely important to understand the consumer and user needs and expectations.
Actually, all products and services are manufactured to meet various needs and demands as their core purpose. Therefore, it is important to evaluate these needs and desires when it comes to creating a persona. At the same time, in-depth and comprehensive research will enable creating of the right persona.
In addition to that, a persona can help guide the product at the design stage. Any product that won’t address a problem or need will not find any reaction on the market. Brands can get an idea about the problems, market gaps and consumer demands by creating a persona. All of these can guide the design process and help create a feasible product.
Why Creating a Persona Is Important?
Creating a persona can bring important competitive advantages to brands and businesses. Knowing the general characteristics of your target audience can help you better understand those people and develop better products. Additionally, persona might eliminate the problems that emerge in the design process. Avoiding previous design mistakes or evaluating the needs accurately might be possible with the persona. All of them will provide time and cost-saving. The saved resources can be allocated to different fields to increase the general efficiency of the company.
If the brands fail to know their existing customers or leads, they are unable to offer the products or services addressing these customers. In addition to that, it is important to understand that each customer segment has different habits, expectations and desires. The one-fits-all solution might be the most incorrect approach in the marketing field. Of course, it is not possible to develop an individual marketing strategy for each consumer or customer. At this point, the persona will take part.
How Is It Created?
In addition to what is a persona, how do you create a persona is a common question. The important thing to create a persona is to accurately evaluate the existing product, service or design. In this process, it is extremely important to check similar products and learn about the consumers of these products. Actually, the persona creating process consists of five main steps. These steps can be expressed as follows:
In-depth knowledge about the users
The first stage of creating a persona is to have in-depth knowledge about the users. The personas consist of the fundamental groups of the target audience. Therefore, the research stage should be meticulous. The data collection stage can include both the existing customers and competitors. The qualitative and quantitative methods are commonly used together. For example, a user survey can be applied to collect the user views about a product. Later, the survey results can be utilized in the persona creating process.
User behavior patterns
Persona creation
At this stage, the persona should be created. Different personas are created based on the research data and behavior patterns. Although persona types and numbers differ among brands and businesses, there are generally 6-8 persona types. However, the number may be limited with 2-3 in niche sectors. The important thing here is to identify the most encountered consumer groups and the characteristics of these groups. After grouping, the consumer, behavior patterns and trend should be identified for each group.
Persona testing
This stage is about testing the created persona. Although everything works fine theoretically, some theoretical approaches might not reflect well in the real life. Therefore, the persona types on the paper must be tested. The required scenarios should be designed to test these personas. The test stage is about evaluating whether the persona meets a predetermined target. Additionally, the documentation process must be completed at this stage. Documentation will help the individuals who will be involved in the marketing processes later.
Update existing data
The last stage for creating a persona is updating the existing data. The data tested at the scenario stage will help you to adjust your existing personas. At the same time, you can share your findings with your team for comprehensive implementation. This stage can be considered as the learning and moving forward stage.
What Are Persona Types?
There are different approaches to creating a persona. Actually, these approaches give a broad idea about persona types. Fundamentally, four different persona creating approaches can be expressed. These are:
Persona focusing on the purpose
The brand has a purpose to achieve in this persona. Therefore, the persona types are designed to enable the brand to reach its purpose in the shortest time and the most effective way.
Persona focusing on the role
Although this persona type focuses on the purpose, the behaviors are also considered. The user’s role for the brand is considered.
Engaging persona
Fictional persona
Fictional persona is based on real-life implementation data rather than research results. Various assumptions must be created based on experience and past real-life scenarios. Later, these assumptions are used for creating a fictional individual definition.
In addition to these four types, it is possible to talk about two persona types regarding consumers and marketers. Briefly, these are defined as marketing persona and buyer persona. These types are used interchangeably but in fact, these are two distinct concepts.
What Is Marketing Persona?
A marketing persona is among the most fundamental elements of marketing practice. Without these personas, it is not possible to identify who the target will be for the marketing message. In a way, this persona can be regarded as a tool to identify the target audience and message. It can be expressed as the fictional reflection of a real user. This process does not involve any personal data. The general characteristics of the existing customers or the customers of the competitors are used for creating a fictional individual.
Basically, a marketing persona is an approach to determining the key consumer segments of a brand. Key consumer segments can be defined as groups that most engage with the brand, complete the highest purchasing behaviors and support the brand.
What Is Buyer Persona?
In most cases, the buyer persona can be confused with the marketing persona. Although these seem to be similar concepts, there are certain differences. The buyer persona is the ideal customer-created based on the data obtained from qualitative and quantitative research. The research process might involve competitor research as well as customer behavior research.
The initial market research to identify the ideal customer prevents brands to focus on an incorrect audience. Additionally, the marketing budget can be spent on customers who will provide benefits for the brand. On the other hand, the market potential of the products or services can be identified with this preliminary research.
Persona Examples
Teacher Alison
Alison Working as a Teacher in a Rural Area
Age: 32
Location: A village in the UK
Education: Faculty of Education
Occupation: Elementary school teacher
Family: Lives on her own
Targets:
- To provide better education for the students
- To discover her area
- To read books and articles for self-development
This persona has the characteristics to include all individuals working as a teacher in rural areas. This consumer group often needs products and services that are missing in the village. The demand for luxury product consumption is relatively lower than the teachers living in the city. But they frequently use transportation services to reach the nearest city. These individuals spend their days’ teaching and visiting the nearby villages in their free time.
Marketing Director Adam
Age: 34
Location: London
Education: Faculty of Business Administration
Family: Lives on her own
Targets:
- To move forward in his career by taking the risks
- To spend time in the most popular venues of the city
- To have the latest technological products
Marketing director Adam instantly follows the developments in business life. Therefore, Adam is an active internet user. He meets almost all of his needs including the daily market needs from online stores. Adam is in his 30s and he loves going out on weekends and dining in luxury restaurants. He works hard to be the best in his sector and gets a promotion.
Student Mary
Mary Getting Ready for College Exams
Age: 18
Location: Edinburgh
Education: High school student
Family: Lives with her mother, father and brother
Targets:
- To be accepted to a good college in Edinburgh
- To spend time with her friends in cafés and restaurants
- To shop the fashionable clothes
Mary is getting ready for the college exam and she is an active internet user. Mary spends a lot of time on social media and she can see what her peers in other countries do. She wants to purchase and use the clothes, bags and shoes she saw online. At the same time, she loves spending time with her friends to relax and take a break from the exam stress. Her favorite venues include the popular cafés in the city and chain coffee shops like Starbucks.
Banker Alice
Banker Alice
Age: 45
Location: London
Education: Faculty of Economics
Family: Lives with her husband and 2 children
Targets:
- To spend more time with her family
- To decrease her workload and find solutions to make her life easier
- To start doing sports
Banker Alice lives with her husband and 2 children. One of her children is an adolescent and the other one is in elementary school. Therefore, Alice spends a lot of time between her children and her job. Alice prefers practical solutions to make her life easier. Since she has limited time, she meets most of her needs online. At the same time, Alice is an active social media user like her friends around her.
Brands can get a picture of the problems, market gaps and consumer desires by creating a persona. All of this can guide the design process and help create a viable product.
When you know the general characteristics of your target audience, you can better understand them and design better products. Also, a persona can eliminate the problems that occur in the design process. The persona can be used to avoid previous design mistakes or to accurately assess needs.