Crafting Customer Personas: A Deep Dive into how we do it

Understanding your customers is the cornerstone of successful marketing. But how do you move beyond demographics and get to the heart of who they are, what drives them, and what makes them tick? Enter the powerful tool of our AI  data-driven customer personas.

Find out more here about why personas are a crucial part of your marketing and brand strategy and why 72% of organisations using personas are seeing a reduction in their lead times.

How we can support in the creation of personas at Cite 

This article will guide you through how we can support you in the creation of crafting objective, data-driven personas that utilise the very best in AI capabilities to quickly provide deep insight to help inform your brand, marketing and innovation programmes within your business.

Establish the goal

In order to create the most useful personas we need to understand what you are looking to gain and achieve by producing them. For example are you looking to gain insights to help with future product innovation ideas, or understand how to sell your current products and services in a better and more engaging way?

At Cite we work with you to establish and understand your goal(s) and what you want to achieve.

Data is Key: Building the Foundation

Great personas should not be built on hunches or guesswork. They should be built on a solid foundation of data about your existing  and prospective customers. This data can be broadly categorised into two types:

• Quantitative Data: Numbers tell a story. Age, location, income, and language are all readily available through website analytics, CRM systems, and social media insights tools like Facebook Audience Insights.
• Qualitative Data: The “why” behind the “what.” This dives deeper, uncovering needs, goals, and motivations. Social listening, surveys, and customer reviews and feedback emails are goldmines for this kind of data.

Our experienced brand planners and insights team are experts in helping to identify the most important and useful data to focus on. And what’s more all of the data used in the production of our AI personas is anonymised and therefore 100% GDPR compliant.

The key takeaway? Objectivity is paramount. Let the data guide your image selection, not personal preferences.

The Persona Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together

With your data identified and gathered, it’s time to build your personas. Here are the key components that are included in our personas: 

• Biography : A short description about who they are, where they live, income levels, stage of life, work life (if B2B) 
• Picture: A picture tells a thousand words. Using generative adversarial networks (GANs) we create an image pool that best represents your persona.
• What makes them tick (Needs) 
  • Pain Points: What problems do your customers face? What keeps them up at night?
  • Goals: What are their aspirations? What do they hope to achieve? Understanding both sides of the coin is crucial.
• Go-Tos: This section translates your understanding of their needs into action. How can you approach them in a way that resonates with their specific situation? How can you craft messages to engage different personas? 
• Interests: People are more than just demographics. Their hobbies, passions, and online behaviour offer valuable insights into how to connect with them on an emotional level.

Representativeness: Not all customers are created equal. Assign a score to each persona based on how much of your customer base they represent. This helps you prioritise your marketing efforts and budget focus.

The Final Act: Sharing Your Personas

Once your personas are complete, it’s time to share them with your team. A persona document should be the first port of call for marketers, allowing them to understand your customers and tailor their messaging accordingly.

We will provide you with a nicely designed document to share with your internal team. But beyond that how else can we help bring your personas to life?

• Persona videos 
• Persona sales decks – for your sales team to better understand how to identify and then communicate with your personas.
• Smart Personas! An online dashboard where you can interact with a digital twin of your customer – imagine being able to ask your customer anything and get instant feedback. Which ad do you like better? Which product feature is more important to you?

The Persona Journey: An Ongoing Process

Remember, personas are living documents. As you gather more customer data, revisit and refine them to ensure they continue to be accurate reflections of your target audience.

We recommend keeping your personas updated at least annually. Markets change, competitor sets change, life changing events influence all of us and hence how we market and communicate with our customers (Brexit, pandemics!).

In Conclusion

By investing time and effort in crafting detailed customer personas, you gain a powerful tool for understanding your audience and creating targeted marketing campaigns that resonate. Remember, data is your friend, storytelling brings your personas to life, and staying objective is key. 

If you are interested in working with Cite to craft your next set of compelling personas please get in touch with Laura.