I have used formal personas as a way to provoke conversation about responding to the needs of many kinds of users in one online presence; i.e., in website experience design. I admit to never having done this formally in marketing segmentation work, although the tools that I’ve created and will continue to share (see below) essentially do the same thing. Nevertheless, I am intrigued with the idea of trying this!
Personas are, to quote Wikipedia (which actually has an interesting article on this topic), “fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.” User personas, according to Wikipedia, are aggregates of users, although I am not familiar with this distinction.
But here’s how personas work, in somewhat of an oversimplification of the process: Say you are a consumer financial institution (bank). You have done some demographic profiling (that is, you know something about the ages of your customers; where they live; how many signatures on the account; what kinds of accounts (checking, savings, loans, mortgages); and you believe that these are your basic customer sets:
1. Young adults, including students with loans
2. Relatively young families, saving for important life events (home purchase, college education) while trying to put some assets toward retirement. One or more adult in the household employed full time
3. 50-70somethings, some empty nesters, with mortgages mostly paid down and looking toward retirement (and leaving assets for their children). One or more adult in the household employed full or part time
4. Retirees, living on savings and fixed incomes, possibly employed part time
The persona of (2) might look like this:
Donna, 32, and Ron, 33, have been married for three years and are expecting their first child. They had hoped to have a home of their own before this point, but real estate prices in the neighborhoods they want are still too high so they are holding out. In the meantime, they rent the second floor of a duplex near Donna’s parents. Both work and will be relying upon their parents to help with child care. Part of their plan is for Donna to reduce her working hours after the baby is born, but she must work at least 30 hours in order for the family to retain her excellent group health insurance coverage. Donna and Ron have joint checking and savings accounts, and each has a modest personal account as well. Ron has a student loan, almost paid off using his personal account. Donna drives a new mini-van, a gift from her parents. Ron drives his car from college and has his eye on a high end sports car. Both have credit card balances under $250; however, they will have to finance Ron’s new car and they finance their vacations as well (they plan to take a cruise prior to the baby’s birth). Both have 401(k) plans through work and contribute about half the maximum allowable.
And the persona of (4) might look like this:
Karen just celebrated her 70th birthday. She retired from her job in a big insurance company three years ago with a pension and currently collects Social Security. Although Karen deeply misses her husband, John, who passed away last summer, she is essentially financially secure; her retirement is fully funded—and things will be even better when she sells their four-bedroom home, which is in a sought-after neighborhood and is currently on the market. The mortgage on the house is paid off; Karen pays off her one credit card every month and has no other debt. She has one son, Martin, who lives in another state but who checks in on Karen often and makes an effort to bring his wife, Judith, and son Jake to visit at least 2-3 times each year. Karen volunteers at the local food bank two mornings each week, belongs to a health club where she swims and takes dance class, and enjoys gardening. She has put a down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in an adult living community and looks forward to building a new life for herself without the maintenance headaches of a house which, she says, was always John’s job.
It is relatively easy to see that, no matter what type of service you hoped to sell to your customers, you would approach Karen, Donna and Ron entirely differently. Donna and Ron are just starting out, are trying to be responsible but have some financial challenges ahead and could be at risk for some debt issues if they aren’t careful. (Consider also that “Donna and Ron” could be two entities: Donna/Ron the couple, and Donna and Ron as individuals.) Karen is very conservative and seems to have her finances well at hand, but doesn’t appear to be planning ahead for her grandchild which could be advantageous to her tax-wise and an opportunity for the family. (Please note: I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, this is just an example!)
This is where our prior work on developing a solutions focus comes in. Use what you know about your customers, now more fully developed with details, to help you figure out what products and services to try to promote.
This is where our prior work on developing a solutions focus comes in. Use what you know about your customers, now more fully developed with details, to help you figure out what products and services to try to promote.
Then, how you go about talking to these different customers; that is, through what channels (advertising, direct marketing, social media, etc.) is then highly variable and possibly somewhat complex. But you can see that talking to each in the same voice would not be nearly as effective.
Summary: At the end of the day, personas are simply a technique for identifying, and then getting to what matters to, the people you want to have as customers. This is also called market segmentation.
I created this little chart for a discussion leading to some value prop work. If you aren’t inspired to write narratives like the ones above you might find it useful.
Identify your targets (YOUNG ADULTS, YOUNG FAMILIES, 50-70s, RETIREES) along the top and work down from there.
A personal note: this may be my last post of the year; I am working on one more but the ideas are complex and it’s challenging to get it down to a couple of pages. THANK YOU for being part of my blog in 2012. I look forward to sharing more with you in 2013!
