What are personas and why are they important to message development?

What is a persona?

Think of a persona as a composite sketch of a member of your audience. They are an imaginary person with a name, history, and story. They have particular ways of doing things and their own viewpoint on the world. Creating a persona is a great way of understanding your audience – they might be someone who visits your website, future customers, employees, potential employees. These people all:

• Have their own goals and objectives
• Make important decisions that may affect your organization, your product, your project
• Have lives that may be affected by your decisions
• Are financially, physically, mentally better or worse off when things change
• Are connected to a wider network of people who are, in turn, affected by any changes and decisions

A persona is developed through a mix of research (web analytics, social media listening etc), knowledge (interviews and personal experience), and … well, educated guesswork.

Why are personas important?

Simply, personas help you understand your audiences better. It helps you look at yourself from someone else’s perspective. What do they think about what we do? How will they react to certain situations? By developing these pen portraits, we can:

1. identify with our audiences. Once we know who they are, we can work to solve their problems and provide them with the information they need;
2. understand a little more about where they spend their time and how they get their information, improving our approach; and
3. speak the same language to the same people. If you have defined personas, everyone is focused on communicating with one person.

Personas help you shift focus away from a generic audience and start working with actual people with specific interests, values, and needs.

What makes up a persona?

THE BASICS

This covers everything from their socioeconomic level to their name. By naming your persona, it immediately becomes more human and more relatable. It’s all very well talking about messaging for “Persona C” but isn’t it better to talk about messaging for “Cynical Sally”? Make your audiences personal – give them enough details to make them real enough so you can easily step into their shoes. They become easier to understand, you have a clear image of who you’re talking to, and that’ll make sure your communications hits the mark.

• What’s their name?
• What do they do? How much are they paid?
• What’s their job title? What does their role entail?
• What’s their education?
• Are they married? Children?
• Where do they live?

GOALS AND CHALLENGES

It’s in this section that you need to think about why your audience cares about your project / service / company / project. What do they need to achieve? How can you help them do that? It’s in this section where you’ll quickly realise whether you’re targeting the right type of people and where your value proposition fits in. If you can’t think why one of your personas would care about what you’re saying, it’s likely that you’re talking to the wrong people.

• What are their main goals?
• What are their priorities? Professionally? Personally?
• How you help them achieve these goals?
• What are the problems or challenges they haven’t been able to solve?
• How you help solve these problems?

WHAT DO THEY CARE ABOUT?

To really know a person, you need to know what they care about. Do they have particular values or inclinations that are important to them? Do they have certain personality traits which may determine how they act and react? By working who or what influences your audience, you should be able to adjust your messaging accordingly to talk to them in a voice they trust and understand.

• Values (corporate and personal)
• Common objections (during the sales process / during change etc)
• What does it mean for them to be successful?
• What are their priorities in their role? In their personal life?
• What are the most important features for them?
• Do they have any attitudes or opinions that may make a difference? ]
• Are they risk takers or do they play it safe?
• Are they introvert or extrovert?

HOW DO THEY GET INFORMATION?

The final stage of your persona building is trying to develop a short elevator pitch for each. What is the one thing you can say or do to adjust their thoughts or actions?

• Where do they go for their information?
• What sources do they trust the most?
• Who has an influence over them and the way they think (specific people, media, beliefs)
• Who or what do they have influence over?
• Are they members of any clubs or associations?

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER

• If you have access to surveys, website analytics, or other research, this can really help you drill down into your persona’s needs and wants.
• If you carry out a persona exercise, do it with your whole team. You need to have a range of personalities and opinions to produce a well-rounded persona.
• Ask your audience! If you have the chance, why not ask your audience these questions? Who knows your audience better than themselves?
• If you have social media channels available to you, use them in a listening exercise to find out what your audience are already saying – about you, about the issue, about the world in general.

Once you’ve answered all these questions, you’ve got the skeleton of your persona. How you write it up will depend on you. Some people like narratives, some like something a little more visual. Whatever you do, make sure that your team understands and uses your personas. You can then start moving your strategy and approach away from “I think” towards “Sally needs”.