08 Jan Who Is Your Perfect Customer?

I recently taught a User Experience (UX) course at San Diego State University for the Extended Studies program. It was a ball and since I spent so much time putting together the material for this class, I wanted to share the learnings more broadly with my business clients…and you! I will share all of my UX insights over a few blog posts, starting today with Personas.

The first step to creating experiences that will wow your customers is to know who your customers are! A Persona is an example of your ideal client that goes way beyond basic demographics. Creating robust personas will help you not only understand your customers, but also help you develop marketing content for them that they will understand and consume.

To get started, spend some time thinking of a person(s) that you would love to be your customer. They can be a real person or one that you can dream up – now give them a name. Next write down the following information for that Persona(s).

• Demographics: List gender, type of work, work title, age, income, marital status, # of kids with ages, education level, home ownership status, geography, anything else that is helpful to know.
• Personal Interests: List what they like to do for fun, socially, friends/family, etc. Whatever is important to them.
• Problem(s): List all the reasons why they would be looking for your help.
• Communication Channels: List where they get their information such as friends, social media, blogs or magazines.
• Objections: List any objections that they might have to your product or service.

If you have done all of these steps – then congratulations! You now know your ideal client (i.e. Persona).The great added benefit to doing this work is that you will focus your efforts on the customers you actually want in your business and will stop wasting time on marketing efforts that aren’t relevant. The next step is using this information to develop compelling content in a voice that speaks directly to your Persona(s); using communication channels that are relevant to them. But we will get to that in the next post.

P.S. If you want some homework, check out a few websites and try to guess their Persona(s). It’s fun.