User Persona: Meet Your Business’s Best Imaginary Friend
Overview
To boost sales, it’s better to focus on a specific type of customer who is more likely to make a purchase. Identifying the ideal consumer is known as creating a User Persona, the profile around which you’ll center most of your marketing and user experience efforts.
Today, we’re diving deeper into this concept, explaining what it is and how it can help you. Plus, we’ll guide you through creating your own, because every business has one, regardless of what it sells.
What Is a User Persona?
A User Persona represents the ideal user behavior when interacting with a product or service. To build this fictional representation, businesses rely on observing real user behavior and conducting other research. The goal is to understand the potential customer, including their wants, needs, and interests, in order to improve their experience.
It’s important not to confuse a User Persona with a Buyer Persona. The latter represents the ideal buyer, which might sound similar, but it’s not the same. The key difference is that the “user” represents the person who uses the product, while the “buyer” represents the one who makes the purchase. The User Persona helps you understand and improve the user experience, while the Buyer Persona focuses on the purchasing process and the factors that influence decision-making.
How to Define a User Persona
Every business is different, and the same goes for their ideal user. Here’s how to define yours step by step:
Gather Information
The first thing you’ll need to do is gather information about your potential customer. There are many ways to do this, such as using tools like chatbots on your website to track visitor interactions, analyzing visitor demographics, and understanding how users interact with your site. For example, you can identify what types of users leave their email address and whether they eventually make a purchase.
There are also more traditional methods, like conducting paid surveys, either online or in person. Don’t forget about social media—yours and your competitors’—which can give you valuable insight into your audience.
Identify Behavioral Patterns to Create Your User Persona
Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to identify patterns. For instance, you can analyze differences across age groups, genders, or demographics to find out which is more likely to use your product.
This part of the process can be tedious, but if you manage to segment correctly, you’ll be much closer to creating your ideal User Persona. By now, you should have a clear idea of your ideal user’s age, gender, location, education level, marital status, and income.
Identify Their Needs, Goals, and Pain Points
Sometimes, you may encounter users who seem ideal but don’t end up making a purchase. Why is that? It’s usually because there’s a barrier—often financial, but it could also be social.
That’s why it’s so important to not only identify your potential customer’s demographics but also their pain points, goals, and needs. Why would they buy our product? Can they afford it based on their job? What is their main pain point?
Create Your User Persona Profile
Once you have all the data, you can start defining your ideal user. Remember to create a realistic character, including as much information as possible, which will be explained further down the line.
Once the persona is created, compile it into a document that can serve as training material for various departments. This document will be a comprehensive guide to your ideal user, and all decisions should be based on it.
Test and Continuously Improve
Everyone makes mistakes, and the User Persona you’ve created may not be perfect. That’s why you’ll likely need to make small adjustments to improve it further. In fact, aim for continuous improvement in this area.
Also, keep in mind that your ideal user won’t remain the same forever. As time goes on and significant social or cultural changes occur, you’ll need to adjust certain aspects accordingly.
How Can It Help My Business?
If done correctly—meaning the User Persona reflects real user patterns, has the right context, and focuses on the present—there are numerous benefits. The main advantage is that you’ll know exactly where to direct your efforts when creating and promoting your product, which will help you meet user needs more effectively.
On top of that, having a fictional person in mind allows you to empathize with them. Sometimes we focus too much on ourselves, which can lead to product failure. But if we properly identify with the user, we’ll avoid wasting resources, make fewer mistakes, and concentrate on what really works.
Lastly, it helps align your teams and improves overall efficiency. Without a defined ideal user, your marketing team might work one way, while your design team works another. But if everyone knows who they’re targeting, collaboration will be smoother, and they won’t get in each other’s way.
Components of a User Persona
To create an effective User Persona, you need to be as realistic as possible. The template should include the following:
– Demographic Information: What’s their gender? How old are they? Where do they live? Are they single or married? Do they have children? What’s their educational background? What do they do for work?
– Goals and Needs: What are they looking for? Why would they want our product or service? How do they gather information?
– Pain Points: What are their main concerns? How can we “strike a chord” with them?
– Behavior: How do they interact along the Customer Journey? Through which channels? How long does it take them to make a purchase, and how do they do it? What’s their preferred method of payment? How do they prefer to communicate? Which social platforms do they use?
– Personality: What’s their archetypal personality? What are their typical hobbies?
In some cases, companies even give the persona a fictional name and photo (which can be generated using AI) to help the marketing department better understand the concept.
