If you are dealing with your target group, sooner or later you will come across the term persona, avatar, user persona, buyer persona or customer persona. In this article, I will show you what they are all about and how you can identify and better understand your target group with a customer persona.

What is a customer persona?

A persona is a fictitious person who represents a very specific target group. This group contains people with similar or identical characteristics who are relevant to your business and represent your ideal customer.

You are then no longer talking about a general target group, e.g. the self-employed, but about the persona Mona. She is a freelance copywriter, 28 years old and has very specific goals, doubts, frustrations and problems.

A customer persona makes it much easier for you to put yourself in your customers' shoes and understand their needs.

What is the difference between customer personas and target groups?

A target group is a group of people who are summarized by certain characteristics, e.g. gender, age, job, first-time buyers, returning buyers, etc.

A target group definition is in itself very broad and usually quite imprecise, as in this example:

• Gender: female
• Marital status: married
• Age: 20 - 35 years
• Education: Study
• Job: Freelancer
• Employment relationship: Employed

There are many different customers within this target group. Some are really great, others are not. A customer persona represents the ideal customer from this subset of people.

What are the advantages of a persona?

With a customer persona you will better understand ...

• who your customers are
• what you want
• what drives them
• what problems they have
• what frustrates them
• what stops them from buying
• and where you can find them

Once you have developed your persona(s), you no longer create your content and products for an intangible target group, but for a very specific, ideal customer. You will be able to write texts and plan campaigns more easily if you know exactly who you want to address with your content.

When should I create a persona?

Whether you are starting a new business or want to grow with your current company. Your persona will be a great help for all future decisions and your marketing. That's why you should start now at the latest.

How do I create a customer persona?

You can actually get started straight away. However, you should remember one important thing beforehand:

A persona should always be created or at least checked on the basis of real data. Real data means customer interviews and surveys. If you skip this step, you will end up with a bullshit persona that is only based on your assumptions.

You can start with a bullshit persona, but you should definitely check and validate your persona through customer/user interviews.

Find your target groups with these questions

If you haven't thought about your target group yet, sit down alone or even better with your team and answer the following questions:

• How would you describe your target group?
• What are the most important characteristics of this target group?
• Are there different groups of people in this target group?
• How do these groups differ from each other?
• Is there a particular group that is more important than the others?
• Is there a particular group you want to learn more about? Why?
• Who are your customers? What features and characteristics do they have?

By asking these questions, you will probably find several target groups that you can convert into personas.

Segment your target groups

If you have found a large number of target groups, you should minimize the number. Segmentation is the best way to do this. A segment contains target groups with certain similarities.

Example of segmentation

You can segment your target groups according to demographic and psychographic characteristics.

• Demographic characteristics are, for example
  • Age
  • Place of residence
  • Job
  • Income
  • Education
  • Hobbies
• Psychographic characteristics, e.g.
  • Goals (motivation or reason for purchase)
  • Frustrations
  • Problems
  • Doubts

Or you can even combine demographic and psychographic segments.

Example of the psychographic segment: Problems

• Target groups: Freelancers, small companies
• Problems: too little turnover, poor pay, dependence on a few customers
• Age: 24 to 45 years

This segment includes people from different target groups and of different ages, for example. But all people in this target group have the same problems. You could now convert this target group segment into a persona.

But you can of course also segment your target groups according to demographic characteristics if the target groups have different problems, needs or goals.

Example of the demographic segment: Age

• Target group: Freelancers
• Age: 24
• Problems: Still has no customers and no turnover

and

• Target group: Freelancers
• Age: 37 years
• Problem: Has customers, but sales are not scaling

Depending on their age, these two target groups have completely different problems. You could create two personas from these two target groups.

Goal: Find the smallest possible target group

As you can see, there are many ways to find your target group. Ultimately, you should find the smallest possible group and turn it into a persona.

Fill out the customer persona template

You can enter your target group or target group segment in the following customer persona template and convert it into a persona:

• Name of the persona
• Image (this is what the persona looks like)
• Demographic data
  • Age
  • Place of residence
  • Job
  • Income
  • Education
• Hobbies
  • What does your persona do in their free time?
• Problems
  • What problems does the persona have in their professional/personal life that you solve with your business?
• Frustrations
  • What frustrates or annoys the persona about your industry?
• Doubts
  • What prevents the persona from contacting you or buying your products?
  • Are there any hurdles, objections or fears that need to be overcome?
• Goals
  • What drove the persona to buy your product/service?
• Channels
  • Where can you find the persona?
  • On which social networks or forums can you find them?
  • At which events do you meet them?
• Brands/Influences
  • What other brands does your persona like?
  • What other brands/companies does your persona often come into contact with?
  • What does your persona like about these other brands and companies?

That's it. Congratulations, you have created your first Bullshit Persona!

Visualize your persona

Personas often disappear deep into a cloud or a Word document and never see the light of day again. Out of sight, out of mind!

To avoid this, you should prepare your persona graphically and create a nice document or poster from it.

Print out your persona, set it as wallpaper for your team or project it on the wall in a clearly visible place. The main thing is that the persona stays in your and your team's minds.

How do I use a persona?

Your persona is a communication tool. When writing headlines, for example, you should check whether your headlines address the needs, problems, goals or frustrations of your persona.

When talking to team members, you can use your persona as an argument to support or criticize decisions.

For example, when you create designs, they should fit your persona and not your personal taste.

A persona helps you to focus on your customers and make better decisions for them.

I have created the Bullshit Persona and now what?

At this point, most people stop and have chopped off the topic of user research for themselves.

But this is where the exciting part of personas begins, because the term "bullshit persona" alone should give you food for thought.

Conduct customer interviews

To get the bullshit out of your persona, you need to verify it through interviews. Find out if your persona is based on assumptions or actual facts.

If you've never conducted interviews with your customers before, now is the time to do so. Before you shy away and think to yourself "I don't have the time or money for this", please remember the following:

• How much time and money will you waste if you make decisions based on pure guesswork?
• Your content will work much better if you know what your customers are looking for and how they speak.

Clarity is king/queen and that's what customer interviews will give you. The answers recorded in the bullshit persona should overlap with the statements from the interviews. Otherwise, your personas are and will remain bullshit.

Who should I interview?

Different groups are suitable for the interviews:

1. Customers
2. Leads
3. Customers of competitors

The easiest way is to interview your current customers. This is because current customers (hopefully) already know and like you, represent your target group and are more likely to agree to an unpaid interview.

Choose customers with whom you have a good relationship and with whom you can have a long chat on the phone. It's easy to conduct customer interviews with these customers because they already trust you and will talk to you openly.

How many interviews should I conduct?

The best number is 5 to 10, but every interview counts. Before you don't conduct any, conduct at least one interview. Every interview will improve your marketing as well as your communication and understanding of your customers.

How long does an interview take?

Depending on how talkative your interviewee is, between 20 and 60 minutes. The follow-up usually takes an additional hour or so.

How do you conduct customer interviews?

You should prepare a little for customer interviews. Don't surprise your customers with a spontaneous interview, but book an appointment with them and take your time.

What questions should I ask?

You have already answered some questions in your bullshit persona. You can convert these questions for your interview.

What you should look out for in the questions and during the interview

• Ask open questions. In other words, no questions that can be answered with "yes" or "no".
• Do not provide answers, e.g. by giving examples. If you suggest answers, your interviewee will almost certainly choose from these answers.
• Ask about specific cases from the past and not about general opinions or ideas about the future. Statements about the future are usually not accurate. Unfortunately, people are not fortune tellers.
• You should listen a lot, ask a lot of questions and not hold monologues.

In general, you should have as natural a conversation as possible. If you think of a few more questions during the interview or something is unclear, follow up with a question.

After the interview

Immediately after the interview, you should compare the interviewee's answers with your bullshit persona and make any necessary additions or adjustments.

Conclusion on customer personas

Customer personas help you to get a better understanding of your customers and are relatively easy to create. However, you should always check your customer personas with interviews so that they really correspond to reality and not your dream ideas.

Start right away with your first bullshit persona and dare to conduct interviews with your customers. Your sales figures will thank you for it.