Creating a User Persona for Your Product's Success

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). Creating a user persona for any product or service is essential. It assists you in defining your target audience as well as understanding their preferences, behaviours, and pain points. I’ll walk you through the process of creating a user persona for your product. You’ll learn how to collect data on your target audience, create a fictional character to represent them and use the persona to help guide your product development process.

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

Who are you building for?

A user persona is a fictitious character who represents your target audience’s demographics, behaviours, motivations, and pain points. Knowing your target market is essential for creating a successful product or service.  Creating a user persona helps you focus on the target audience.  It also helps you scope your projects in a way that your customers would understand and appreciate. I was a commercial fashion campaign director and we’d usually capture good emotions like joy, happiness and friendship in our campaign photos. We did this because our intention was to appeal to a certain class of customers who attached emotional significance to wearing clothes.

User Personas Help You Stay Consistent

It helps you stay consistent with your messaging. It’s like a North Star Metric. It helps you decide whether your next project would be meaningful or not to your target audience.

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. Building a loyal following and establishing trust with your audience requires consistency.

Creating a User Persona

Start by identifying your ideal customer. This person should be someone who is most likely to use your product or service and is in desperate need of it. Consider their age, gender, location, interests, and habits. Consider their problems, obstacles, and what motivates them to seek out your solution. This will assist you in developing a clear picture of your target audience and what they require from your product or service.

It’s critical to remember that you can’t make a product or service that appeals to everyone. As a result, it’s best to concentrate on developing one or two personas that represent your ideal customer. This will assist you in developing a solution that will resonate with a specific group of people and will be more likely to produce results.

Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, consider why your product or service is essential for them. What problems does it address? What difference does it make in their lives? Answering these questions will help you gain a better understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your messaging and branding accordingly.

Conduct Customer Research

If you want to create an effective user persona, you must first conduct research to better understand your target audience. If you’ve already generated some leads or sales, you can leverage that historical data and customer insights to gain a thorough understanding of your ideal customer.

One method is to speak with potential customers and ask them open-ended questions about why they use specific products. You can identify patterns in their responses and gain valuable insights into their preferences and needs. Speaking to about 5 people is fine.

Another method of research is to examine how users interact with competitors’ products or other products that serve the same general purpose as yours. For example, if you’re developing a product or service to help people unwind, you could look at how potential customers spend their time doing things like going to the mall, the movies, or the beach. This can assist you in identifying common features in how people use these products which will help you tailor your solution.

Now, you are ready to build your User persona

Build a Summary

1. Their Ethnic background,

2. What type of work they do,

3. Their age,

4. Family life: single mum, married with two kids, husband etc.

5. Add 1-2 everyday activities. Walks their dog. Goes to the gym. Stops at the coffee shop every morning.

What are their Goals?

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

What Frustrates Them?

1. There are 4 key customer pain points.

2. Financial: So many wants and needs, not enough money

3. Productivity: So much to do, so little time.

4. Process:  We all want better ways of living.  We all want something to be fixed or better.

5. 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.

Once you’ve created your user persona, make frequent use of it as you build or scale your business. As you gain more insights and data, continue to update and refine it to ensure that your product remains relevant and resonates with your target audience.

With a well-defined user persona, you can create a solution that meets the needs of your ideal customer while also driving business success.