Understand the concept of user personas, and when to use them
Since the internet has become one of the main shopping tools for customers all over the world, it makes no sense to try to persuade someone to buy something without first knowing their tastes. Let’s take advantage of the rise of user experience to talk about the creation of user personas.
Personas, also known as buyer personas or avatars, are a kind of semi-fictional representation of your “ideal” customer, based on real information about their behavior and diverse characteristics. User Experience (UX) techniques give this understanding more breadth, and can be organized using a flow chart creator.
The creation of personas helps companies to plan more accurate Digital Marketing strategies, aligned with the profile, interests and journey of their customers. In this article, we will look at some effective tips for creating personas for your product, and incorporating UX elements in this process.
Understanding user personas
The purpose of user personas is to create a profile which summarizes the main characteristics of the customers, so that brands can create strategies aligned with its audience, and capable of meeting their demands.
Creating personas requires research: who your customers are, what they do for work, what they do during their day, how they get information and what their greatest needs are. Personas are based on data, not on the assumptions of marketing teams or other professionals.
A persona is basically a character with a name, age, personal history, motivations, dreams, goals, challenges and concerns – as if they were real. All this information makes it more feasible to identify the ideal tone for interacting with real people.
Having access to such detailed imaginary references makes it easier to think of attractive tools and design, more appropriate usability and the best ways to please this “future customer”.
The professional responsible for the creation of personas is Alan Cooper, a software designer and programmer who came up with the concept while developing a project management system in 1983.
Following a series of studies and research, he grasped the importance of the persona: having a person in mind, with real doubts and needs, made it easier to understand and solve complex design and interaction issues.
Over the years, user personas have extended beyond the universe of interaction design, and into the sphere of marketing. And the concept became even more popular with the rise of Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing. Today, personas are one of the main planning tools for brands looking to focus their strategies on the consumer.
The difference between user personas and target audience
The concept of the “target audience” emerged in the context of Marketing 2.0, when brands began to place the consumer at the center of their strategies. Instead of creating campaigns for a mass of consumers, they began to segment markets by age, location, gender, income, education, interests, etc., in addition to psychological and behavioral characteristics.
The target audience is a segment of people with common characteristics, which the brand chooses to target with its campaigns and ads, while user personas trace the entire profile of an individual person.
In other words, while the target audience is a broad, general representation of the customers which a company hopes to reach, composed of a segment of society with certain characteristics in common, the persona focuses on other criteria, including psychographic information, in addition to the geographic and sociodemographic data which also apply to the target audience.
This kind of information – including the name, age, nationality, location, education and more of the user persona – can be organized with the help of a flowchart creator. These factors are then complemented by behavioral characteristics such as personal tastes, what the user is looking for in a product or service, etc. Psychographic criteria include personality, lifestyle and values.
Different types of personas
1 – User or buyer persona: as its name implies, this is a semi-fictional profile that represents your ideal buyer, i.e. the behavior, demands, challenges and goals of your business’ end consumer. From this, you can direct your efforts to generate a positive impact on potential customers and increase your chances of making a sale.
Building user personas makes it easier to plan an efficient strategy and achieve expected results, whether to understand user preferences in relation to payment methods, or to identify how your solutions can solve this customer’s problems.
2 – Audience persona: interaction and engagement between brands and users is also very important in the digital scenario, and often this audience has a different profile from its buyer. This involves creating the audience persona representing anyone who visits your pages on social networks, reads your blog posts or even watches your videos.
3 – Proto persona: this is an initial version of a company’s many personas, created via team brainstorming, to assess the main characteristics of its customers. This initial direction is helpful to begin structuring the creation of more comprehensive profiles.
4 – Brand persona: the persona is not necessarily your consumer or audience – it can be your own company. The idea is to humanize your brand, creating a profile that represents the company’s values and vision and, as a result, translate these concepts into more effective messaging. Many companies are starting to adopt this type of strategy.
Tips for creating your user persona
The first step for creating user personas is research, which includes chatting, digitally or otherwise, with existing customers to find out their opinion about new products.
If your company does not have customers, focus on followers on social media or on visitors to your website – market research is another good alternative. Set up online survey forms to help segment and better understand your niche market.
Social networks are great barometers for understanding organic consumer behavior. Observe how interest in products similar to yours is expressed, and by whom, the criticisms and trends which this audience reacts to positively, and what the competition has to say about it.
Don’t just follow these people on their social networks – interact with them, and create connections. Another option to obtain information is to invest in analyses, which will help you to understand your potential buyer in a more assertive way.
User personas are fundamental to a brand’s strategies, and their importance in the success of a product, or even a business, shows us how solving problems with practical, accurate and durable options should act as the basis of customer satisfaction.
