Creating a customer profile or persona
Your customers should be the driver behind every marketing decision in your business.
The process of creating either a customer profile or customer persona will help clearly define your customers' needs by understanding their buying patterns, such as what, how and where they buy – and more importantly – their motivations for buying.
Difference between a profile and a persona
A customer profile is a basic high-level description of your ideal customers.
A customer persona is a fictional customer with a photo, name and personality that represents the common traits of your ideal customers.
Our marketing plan template will help you to write your customer profile or persona.
Developing a persona
Develop a picture of your ideal customer:
- Who are you already appealing to?
- Who are your favourite customers?
- Who is using your services the most?
When you've answered these questions, describe your ideal customer in detail to help shape a voice for your persona that you'll use for your marketing activities, such as:
- what they wear
- what their hobbies are
- what concerns them
Flesh out and refine
To flesh out and refine your initial assessment, examine the market research information you've gathered and answer the following questions:
- Who are your target customers and how do they behave?
- What are the specific demographics of your ideal customer such as age, social status, education and gender?
- What are your customers' lifestyles, activities, values, needs, interests or opinions?
- Where are they located?
- What type of environment do they live in?
- What are the key phrases or quotes they would use to describe their problems?
- How will your product or service remedy these problems?
Market research will help refine your customer persona and give it a personality to help you start creating marketing messages.
How customer segmentation can help
Market segments are groups of customers who share similar attributes and attitudes and can be defined by:
- location
- gender
- industry
- ethnic identity
- attitudes, such as adventure seekers
- attributes, such as luxury car owners
When you target a well-defined segment of your customers, it's easier to refine your marketing message and your brand so you're speaking directly to them resulting in more targeted promotion and efficient marketing.
The way you segment your market depends on the type of business you run.
How you can improve your offering
Having refined your customer persona, you can now tailor your marketing messages so they speak in a voice your customer can relate to and reflects their desires or concerns.
Having a persona also makes it easier to market your business around your customer and what they want – not what you think they want – and make decisions about:
- how and where to advertise
- what channels or mediums you should be using
- what vocabulary to use