Designing a website without a persona is like driving cross-country with no GPS. The importance of targeting a specific user cannot be overstated — you need to know them better than you know your best friend. In this resource, I will discuss creating personas for your experiences, and how to amplify that persona by adding a user scenario.

In a nutshell:

Your persona defines WHO you are targeting.
Your scenario defines WHY they might be using digital experiences and channels.
Your customer journey map (described in another resource) will outline the details of each step.

Part 1: Personas

What is a persona?

A persona is a model of a real-world customer. Personas humanize the customers that mean the most to your organization, revealing their functional and emotional needs. Personas bring targets and customers to life by conveying their backstory and shining a light on how they view the world around them.

Why are personas important?

Personas are essential for getting crystal clear about who you are targeting and how you can help them. Whether you are a marketer, designer, strategist, or all of the above, having a persona in your arsenal is important because it allows you to create more compelling communications, and as a result, better connections with your audience.

What are the benefits of having personas?

Inspire: Members of the marketing and design team can generate new ideas for reaching or connecting with customers. Personas guide the team’s strategies and designs, allowing them to create more relevant marketing materials and experiences by using a persona to humanize the user.
Generate empathy: A persona allows for a deeper understanding of the customer, beyond functional needs. To make deeper emotional connections with users, it’s important that a business connects their values and beliefs to those of the customer.
Create a shared understanding: When individuals have a collective understanding of persona needs and challenges, they can better understand the opportunities the business has to meet those needs. They can work together to align resources and coordinate plans in a way that serves the customer better. Aside from the benefits within the work, personas are a great way to motivate all team members – no matter what their role – to consider how what they are doing impacts the lives of the customers.

How are personas used?

Throughout the marketing process, the persona can be used in various ways by several team members.

Strategy Formulation: Use personas to determine the channels and tactics you should use to reach targets, and how to help them reach their goals while achieving yours.
Branding and Messaging: Use the personas you create to develop an organization’s value proposition or selling proposition. Identify what your business can do to meet a customer’s needs that another cannot.
Creative/Design: Determine which visual elements appeal to your targets and also help reinforce your brand themes. Consider how your customer will react, and which images might offer the greatest appeal.
Content Strategy: When you know precisely who your customers are, you can develop a content strategy that engages them, overcomes objections, deepens connections, communicates your product value, and ultimately moves them down the path to purchasing.
User Scenarios: Your persona will be a critical input to determine why they would engage with your brand and what they expect from these interactions.
Journey Mapping/Experience Mapping: A persona determines which steps a target goes through, the channels they use during their buyer journey, and how your customer behaves across this journey.

What is included in a persona?

Each organization has its own way of approaching persona development. Here, I will show you the anatomy of my persona. I generally organize mine into five sections (or zones) that include a variety of details, which allow a team member to quickly understand who the persona is.

Here is a list of what is included in each zone.

Zone 1: An Introduction
Snapshot of the persona’s key attributes
GENERAL INFORMATION
Overview which includes personas: Name, Narrative, Photograph, Segment
DEMOGRAPHICS/ FIRMOGRAPHICS
Observable characteristics or data points that identify targets
GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION
Relevant geographic characteristics
Zone 2: Their Heart
Details what the persona cares about the most
KEY PAINS
Pains describe anything that annoys your customers before, during, and after trying to get a job done or simply prevents them from getting a job done.
KEY GAINS
Gains describe the outcomes and benefits your customers want.
EMPATHY MAP
Think and feel? Hear? Say & Do? See?
Zone 3: Their Work
DESCRIPTION
Quick summary of the work that the persona must do; roles they must play
KEY JOBS
Jobs describe the things your customers are trying to get done in their work or in their life. Also called, “Jobs-to-be-done”
Zone 4: Their Values/ Lifestyle
Provides more dimension about the persona’s day
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Description of target’s attitudes, aspirations, values and beliefs – some conscious, some not
LIFESTYLE/ BUSINESS STYLE
A day-in-the-life of a customer. Description of a customer’s lifestyle, interactions, and behavior pattern
Zone 5: Information Preferences
Describes how persona prefers to consume their content.
TECHNOLOGY PROFILE
Description of the type of technologies and devices a customer may use. Description of their level of technology adoption.
CHANNELS
List of channels that the persona may frequently use
CONTENT
List the content that the persona consumes
Zone 6: Buying Behaviors

Creating Personas