How To Create a User Persona for Your Product

Who Needs A User Persona?

You are probably here because you are trying to develop products for people, or trying to finetune marketing efforts (maybe you are putting together a marketing brief). Building great products or being able to deliver the most impactful marketing campaigns requires that you have a 3D image of who your ideal users or customers are. So, that’s why we create user personas.

It’s not enough to know who your customers are. In fact, everyone is an ideal customer. However, there are several layers that make up our lives that influence how we engage different businesses.

There’s a free User Persona Template at the Bottom of this Article, but Hold on…

Who are you building for?

Creating a user persona helps you capture the right audience.  It also helps you scope your projects in a way that your customers would understand and appreciate your efforts. I was a commercial fashion campaign director and we’d usually capture good emotions like joy, happiness and friendship in our campaign photos. These projects were directed at outgoing people for whom shopping and wearing clothes had positive emotional effects.

User Personas Help You Stay Consistent

It’s like a North Star Metric. It helps you decide whether your next project would be meaningful or not.

For example, I’m a blogger who writes for people in their 20 to early 40s trying to figure out their careers or scale their businesses. That’s why my content is primarily on how to get better at work or business. I really could write about healthcare and fitness, but that’s not why people visit my blog.

So, you build personas because you want to make sure you are consistently delivering solutions to the same set of people. You need people to consume what you produce.

Creating a User Persona

I recommend that you start by creating one or two personas if you have a smaller team to work with.  Think about your constraints and realize that you can’t create for everybody.

Find Your Ideal Customer.

For your ideal customer, your product is urgent and important.  Perhaps the question you need to answer is, why is this product a must-have for this user?

Do Your Research:

If you have made some leads or sales, then you already have an idea of who your ideal customer might be. Dig into historical data for insights.

Talk to potential customers about why they use certain products. Ask open-ended questions.  Talk to 3 or 4 people and ask the same questions.  Adding what they said to your persona is important too.

You could also do some research into how users engage competitor products or other products that fulfil the same broader purpose.  For example, people go to different places to unwind: The mall, the cinema, and the beach. Find what characteristics that are common to how they use other products.

Now, you are ready to build your persona.

 Who Are They:  Build a Summary

• Their Ethnic background,
• What type of work they do,
• Their age,
• Family life: single mum, married with two kids, husband etc.
• Add 1-2 everyday activities. Walks their dog. Goes to the gym. Stops at the coffee shop every morning.

What are their Goals?

You may add one broader life goal but the other goals should relate to your product

What Frustrates Them?

There are 4 key customer pain points.

• Financial: So many wants and needs, not enough money
• Productivity: So much to do, so little time.
• Process:  We all want better ways of living.  We all want something to be fixed or better.
• Support: Not having help to achieve their goals.

Again, relate frustrations to the product.

Now, you are done. Congratulations. I hope that you use this persona frequently as you build or scale your business.

And Here’s Your Free Template

This was actually part of my assignment on the Google Program Management Certificate Course.

It was knowledge freely given and  I now pass it to you.

All the best.