Learning how to create a user persona is crucial for your small business to guide marketing decisions and marketing strategy.
I recently worked with a business to help them craft user personas, and they mentioned that the process helped them truly visualize who they are marketing to. User personas are helpful to remember the person who you are speaking to rather than an ambiguous audience who you don’t know or connect to.
User persona(s) are the foundation for your marketing strategy and can pave the way for targeted marketing strategies. Let’s dive into the 4 steps to follow to create your user persona(s)
What is a User Persona?
Did you know that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer a personalized experience? As a small business, you are only able to craft this personalized experience if you first don’t know who your target audience is.
A User Persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. Typically a business will have a document with detailed information of its persona which includes demographic info, motivations, objectives, social media behaviors, and interests.
These user persona’s aren’t just made out of the blue – you’ll want to do research in order to craft your user persona.
So here are the 4 simple steps to create your user persona:
- Conduct Research
- Develop Personas
- Test Your Messaging
- Assess and Optimize
How to Do Consumer Research to Create Your User Persona
Consumer research is a crucial part of this process. You should use data to back up your conclusions! You’ll first want to start by identifying who your current audience is and determine whether or not that is your target audience. You can do this by exploring and researching your current (or future) customers.
If your business has already fully operated, you can utilize your digital or analog platforms to track customer engagement. These resources can include:
- Google Analytics (or your analytics platform)
- Social Media Analytics (Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Linkedin all have features to assess your business’ audience)
- Customer Surveys
If your business is not fully operational, you can still utilize other creative measures to conduct consumer research. You can conduct market research by researching online about the behaviors of specific demographics that you want to target.
I was working with a small business that was smaller and still gaining traction earlier this year. Since we didn’t have a lot of data from their social media insights, I decided to do additional market research online. I looked up information about the business’s target audience (in this case, it was Latina women) and their social media behaviors. I found several websites that were helpful in my research.
- GWI is a marketing research agency that provides free resources on many demographics. I utilized many of GWI’s free reports to find specific data on the demographic I was researching.
- The U.S. Census Bureau website helped me gather data on the current percentages of people living in the local area where the business operates.
- Your local library may have helpful resources for small businesses to research demographics and local businesses
Understanding Your Demographics To Create User Personas
After pulling the data on your consumers, begin by analyzing and exploring the data. Here are some example questions you can ask:
- Do certain demographics utilize Facebook more than Instagram?
- Do more people live in a rural area vs. the city?
- What time of day are people engaging with your content?
- Why are people using your service? What motivates them?
Dig into your audience’s lifestyle and really try to “get into their shoes”.
Develop Your User Personas
Now that you’ve done the research, you can now create a User Persona Document! This document can serve as a reference for your small business. Want to get a free User Persona Worksheet copy for yourself? Click here to access a Canva template that is ready to edit for your own business!
Your user persona document should include characteristics to make them feel like a real person. This includes:
- Name and Image – you can make a fake name and fake profile image to represent your user.
- Demographic details – this should include info such as age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, primary language, and any other demographic details that are helpful
- Behavioral patterns – how your persona interacts with social media, marketing, online content, preferred channels, preferred content formats, and preferred devices
- Motivations – this should include your persona’s motivations and their reasons for seeking your services.
Want to create your own User Persona for your Small Business? Get your FREE User Persona Worksheet here!
Testing Your Messaging
After you’ve created your user personas, you’ll want to put them to the test. You’ll want to create content, copy, designs, and your user experience catered toward your user persona. Here are 3 steps to tailor your messaging
- Tailor Your Content: any kind of content that you create – whether that be blog posts, social media content, or marketing materials – should be aligned with the preferences and interests of your user persona.
- Target Your Advertising: address the main pain points that your user persona has in your advertising by speaking to these pain points and providing a solution through your business.
- User Experience: Lastly, you’ll want to tailor your business experience to the needs of your customers. Think through every touch point that your small business makes with a customer, from beginning to end. This would include: the first time your customer learns about your business, the first time they visit your social media, the research process your customer undergoes to learn more about your service, and the onboarding process once they have decided to purchase your service. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to tailor the experience for your persona.
Assessing and Optimizing
After you have tested your messaging toward your user persona, you’ll want to assess whether or not your marketing efforts are effective. Relying on data to assess your success is crucial here. You can A/B test ad copy, assess your customer acquisition rate, and take a look at your conversion rates.
If your metrics are going in a positive direction, then continue to hone in on your user persona and your messaging. If your metrics are going in a negative direction or are not gaining traction, you may need to reassess your user persona and determine whether or not to test a different target audience.
User personas are living and breathing documents, so don’t forget to continue updating and revisiting them every year. As your target audience ages and evolves, so will their needs and motivations. This means you’ll want to continue reassessing who your target audience is and whether or not they are authentic to your business model.
User personas are a guiding document for your small business and it will continue to evolve and grow as your business does. If you do the hard work up front to do meticulous consumer research and create a detailed persona, you can ensure that your business will create personalized experiences for your audience and increase sales.
If you’re looking for help creating your user persona, let’s start a conversation! Contact me today to learn more about the services that I offer to support small businesses to create user personas.
