A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona

and zoom in on your marketFrom SpikeLab.org

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

Your customers are human beings…

…with problems, needs, goals, habits, who live and work in certain environments.

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

What is Persona development?• A process to represent this information in a usable format• A process to help you identify your FIRST CUSTOMER so you

can build with direction and purpose

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

What is a persona?Any of these five groups1. decision maker - whoever decides to buy your product2. economic buyer - the one with the money that will cut you the check3. recommenders - which can be the decision maker herself or other peers4. influencers - generally known figures in the industry your customer is in5. end users - those that actually will use the product day in day out

Each persona has different functions, goals, and orientations

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

Give me an example• OK: Facebook. Facebook has customers and users• A customer is someone who pays you• A user just uses your product. • Any product hoping to make money from advertising falls in this bucket with the

people using the product being the users and the marketers being the customers.• In a case like this you have at minimum two personas and failing to be clear

about it will kill your business. • Furthermore once you have the two persons with stated needs & goals it should

also be more obvious how the two are potentially in conflict, a problem you'll have to deal with.

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

Your Persona is still a hypothesis to test• The most important thing you'll have to test for is obviously their

needs and goals, which must be aligned with your product offering, but you may also find that the demographics you put down were incorrect or that the person doesn't engage in the behaviors you thought they would.• Some of them you will have to specifically test for, others will just be

side-effects of more important experiments, but it's crucial that you treat what you wrote as a living document that you need to update based on the outcomes of your experiments.

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

Luxr's Persona Development Framework• Give it a face• Demographics• Behaviors• Goals and needs

The goal is to have a visual and contextual (to the problem you solve) representation of your customer, an idea of what that person may look like, what things they engage with and what they are looking for (again in the context of the market you're in).

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

How to create your persona1. Dump and sort: Generate ideas on your own to get them out of your head with a

Sharpie, Post-it notes, and table space – THEN discuss with team• Post-it Notes function like idea containers…they can be added, removed and easily shifted.”

Sticky notes are also the perfect size for one concise idea.

2. Give it a face: name, face, place, bubble speech. After you’ve done this you should feel like you know her

3. Facts: additional information to help identify your customer, e.g., demographics (age, income, geography, marital status, etc.)

4. Behaviors: Use action verbs to describe behaviors you could observe5. Needs and goals: what does your persona want to accomplish? what does she

need? Do NOT be too generic here – everyone wants more money and more time

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html

Work on a wall

Source: http://www.spikelab.org/blog/persona-development.html