Our Process
Persona
We start a game in which we create our own character. We give it its individual features, beginning with age, interests or appearance.
This provides us with a ‘real’ avatar which can be defined based on the characteristics attributed to it.
It is similar with a persona which will be the reflection of our future or existing customer/user.
However, the difference is that a persona is not created on the basis of our own notions, but based on collected information. What exactly does the term ‘persona’ include?
Personas are created by humans. Persona is a term meaning a market segment representative
A Persona will give flesh to our customer/user, e.g. entering our website.
We will assign him or her features and characteristics such as age, residence, hobbies or occupation.
With this knowledge, we will prepare an offer tailored to the customer/user needs. Without persona, it’s like shooting blanks: our offer will not hit the target.
Persona is a representative of a customer segment. What does it mean? Segmentation consists in grouping people interested in our services.
We take into account demographic and mental similarities. What’s more, segmentation reveals specific customer habits and preferences.
It also allows us to understand how others perceive and evaluate our product (if it is already in the market). The customer segmentation is covered in a separate article.
All this enables you to create a sales funnel, or a path covered by a customer from the moment of the first knowledge about a product to its purchase.
In the era of new technologies and the Internet, such process seems relatively easy to carry out. Because there are numerous tools facilitating the entire process.
Persona before starting a business, or human first
It is very important to create personas even before starting a business. It can be illustrated with the case of Easy Shave Club, a carbon copy of the popular US Dollar Shave Club. Both businesses deal in providing, among others, razors as a subscription service.
Wojciech Bartoszek, the founder of Easy Shave Club selling subscriptions through the website, thought that his customers would primarily be young people.
And yet it turned out that mainly older customers are interested in his offer. Bartoszek had to adapt his existing sales model accordingly.
Older customers turn out to be distrustful of the word ‘subscription’, which required to develop a more flexible model of cooperation with club members.
The Easy Shave Club’s founder’s mistake was that he opted for his own idea about his customers instead of conducting some research which would have enabled him to actually get to know them.
There are tools available for creating personas. Personapp is one example. This application provides guidance on the data to be collected to create a persona.
This is a convenient tool as it guides you through the entire process step by step. Make My Persona is another useful application. Although a less extensive solution than Personapp, it is still an interesting proposition.
Before we proceed to promote any services or products, let’s take a look at what components should a persona include
A persona should include:
- Basic data such as age, gender, residence, education, occupation or interests;
- Role in a social group: in a family these will be household chores, budget contribution, etc.;
- Goals and challenges: value hierarchy, passion or a life motto of a persona;
- Financial situation including monthly earnings, savings or loans.
You can also include additional content which will allow you to know the customer/user even better.
Persona and free data sources for quick verification of assumptions
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- Yandex Metrica
- Google Search Console
- HubSpot and other CRM systems
- Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks where you are active and have access to the users' analytics panel.
The resources that can be obtained through social media and analytical tools for the monitoring of traffic flow on our website are helpful in building a persona.
The most popular is Google Analytics which have received an interesting alternative in the form of Yandex Metrica.
Yandex Metrica offers a functionality which you won’t find in the Google tool. It is the possibility to track user sessions: to ‘spy’ on the manner the Internet users viewed our website.
This enables us to, e.g. notice that the users do not scroll a subpage to the very bottom, because they consider the newsletter block the end of the subpage, while there is still important information below.
The more detailed analytical tools, the better. A persona should be ‘flesh and blood’, and for this you need as much detailed information as possible. It this way we will be able to offer our services/products more easily.
UX and Marketing Persona. We explain both terms
We can further distinguish:
- Marketing persona – focusing on demographic information, motivation and preferences. It includes data such as age, residence or occupation.
- Design persona – focusing on goals, behavior and sensitive points. A persona of this type is created based on conversations and meetings with customers. A design persona describes why a person makes specific choices, and explains relationships between decisions and certain activities.
In fact, every business is simple. Just discover a need and fulfill it. In a word, offer a value.
The work on Persona is the first tangible result which leads you to a business idea and to the creation of the right business application.