The key to success in running a business is to know what customers want and need. Although there’s no exact formula to determine their needs, you can still find success by taking advantage of user personas. Having user personas take many responsibilities of business and make them much easier to process.
What Are User Personas?
A user persona is a made-up character based on user data made to help you understand your customers. These areas include brand identity, writing voice, website design, social media, customer pain points, user experience, and data and analytics. However, there are more elaborate ideas to consider. Check out here to find other significant information.
User personas also represent real and living people who’ll engage with your products and services. While people featured on personas are hypothetical, the details on the document must be real. Every section should be completed based on research, facts, and hard data.
Below are some of the things you should consider when creating user personas:
1. Use Real Data
When it comes to creating a user persona or a buyer persona, always use real data and never make things up. After all, it’s a business document that should be conducted properly. Also, your user personas are only as strong as the accurate data supporting them. If you avoid using empirical data, don’t expect your user personas to be effective.
2. Consider Title
Having a reputable but unique title enables you to reference a group of users quickly during discussions. It’s crucial to pick titles wisely. If you give user personas human names, ensure those who view the documents don’t make generalizations through the names alone.
For example, a user persona that’s named ‘Emma’ doesn’t mean every user in the category is female. If you decide to use titles, ensure they’re specific. Avoid the ones that are too general. Before you settle on a title, consider the message it sends to the readers and the details it conveys.
3. Use Detailed Bios
The user persona’s bio section might seem a little intimidating for non-creative types. However, never shy away from it and consider tackling it proactively. One of the advantages of user personas is humanizing hard data, and the bio ties every human aspect together.
It’s a good idea to challenge yourself to make a description that depicts real human beings. But if you’re struggling, consider using a background from real-life customers. Ideally, you should have user profiles on file from your customer research. If not, you may pull some details from the social media profiles of actual customers.
4. Use Customer Surveys For Data Collection
If you don’t have enough customer data to create user personas, you can collect data easily. The best and quickest route is customer surveys since you can ask questions that would help you determine personality traits. Also, your performance analytics can answer lots of demographics depending on the settings.
If you have the resources, it’s perfect to invest in thorough user research such as on-site field trips, product testing, actual user interviews, and more.
5. Take Note of Demographics
This section in user personas provides viewers quick insights into one’s background, consumption practices, and lifestyle. The demographics must reflect trends from surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. The best way to find statistics on consumer demographics is through researching on the internet about the latest trends.
Get data on the age, origin, and marital status of the people currently visiting your website and interacting on various social media platforms. This will help you categorize who your target customers are.
6. Include Preferred Channels
If you want to reach your target audience and define user personas effectively, you have to include the preferred channels of your customers. This is because you might not find your elderly customers on social media, and you can’t expect your young customers to read business journals.
These days, tech-savvy people can be reached online through different applications. From your data collection journey, you must have a good picture of what channel your target audience is using.
The preferred channels of most customers nowadays are divided into several categories, which include the following:
- Referral – recommendations from family and friends, influencer blogs, and online reviews
- Online And Social Media – streaming audio and video ads, banner ads, and other social media platforms
- Traditional Ads – billboards, print, radio, and television
- Public Relations and Guerilla Efforts – experiential marketing, events, out-of-the-box ads
Those categories are broad, but you could consider all the options if they’re relevant to your target consumers.
Wrapping Up
A user persona is a key tool to explore the preferences of audiences and help businesses make well-informed decisions that reflect user needs accurately. At first glance, fictitious user personas may seem like a burden, but they help satisfy the primary needs and wants of your customers.