If you want to win customers, you have to understand them. This sounds plausible at first and perhaps even simple at first. But this is often where the problem lies. After all, even the best of friends talk past each other. It’s the same in business life: If you want to understand friends and acquaintances, you have to deal with them. In private life, this would mean taking time for each other, listening, inquiring, knowing history and experience, and of course, knowing that everyone has their own truth. This is also a reason why any company that does not know its own personas will make decisions that reflect its own preferences. But when you develop a marketing strategy, it’s important to involve your customers. Not individuals will be able to listen to you, very few know you privately. And that’s why persona mapping is a wonderful tool for getting to know customers better and aligning everything with their needs.
Unlike the target group, which is usually only vaguely identified, for example by age, gender, education and the social networks they hang out on, the persona gives the customer a face. This face represents your typical customer. The description of the persona goes far beyond the information provided when defining a target group. A persona describes not only the socio-demographic characteristics of a target group, but also challenges they live with, their problems, but also their wishes and needs they have of the company or your product.
Personas must be validated
Personas cannot be defined from an internal perspective. The point of this concept is to validate clearly, not to make estimates, but to use analyses, surveys and key figures to find out what this person – the customer – is really like, what makes them tick and what moves them.
When we define your personas at Faktor K, we gather information from a wide variety of sources and opportunities for validation. This is a process in which the personas can always adapt. Based on key figures and internal focus interviews, theses on the influencing factors, channels, needs are initially established. These theses must subsequently be validated. To do this, we use customer surveys, targeted market research, web analytics data, customer data, market data and market studies, and social media audience insights. Each statement on the peronamap gets a valideration ranking.
This has the advantage that measures in the company are now taken on the basis of validated information. The feasibility of these measures is always guaranteed. Your portfolio of offers or services is thus improved in terms of customer benefit and satisfaction.
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Age of the persona...or not?
We often discuss the age of the persona with colleagues, clients and customers. My observation: a precise definition of age often does not add value. Of course, an age helps for orientation. But rather, it is about the life or work style of a persona and the resulting needs for a company. It is the same with most socio-demographic characteristics that we usually know about a target group. Even if my neighbor and I are the same age, gender, or enjoyed the same education, we make different choices every day. Therefore, we consider these features to be incidental. We get to know your customers better!
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With a customer-focused business strategy, you prioritize the needs of your customers. You can recognize a company that values customer focus by the way it promotes a certain corporate culture. The goal is to improve customer satisfaction and build and deepen stronger relationships with customers. The first step to better respond to customers is clear personas. These help to better understand the customers.
Defining target audiences is about figuring out to know the characteristics of your target audience. Characteristics such as gender or place of residence play just as important a role as the question of what wishes, problems or needs your target group has.
Make use of the creation of different personas.
Personas can be located not only in marketing, but in all areas of the company.
As a company, you want to convince people. This can only be achieved if you know these people and their personal needs, goals and challenges as well as possible. With a persona definition you manage to clearly segment your target groups. A key success factor here is to precisely inquire about and validate the buying behavior and needs of the personas.