Do you really know who your customers are? Do you take a 30,000-foot view or a more granular, zoomed-in view in understanding and describing them?
I did several workshops this week on personas and journey mapping. The two are intimately intermingled, and that’s an important point to remember.
But first, back to my original question: Do you really know who your customers are? How does your company define or segment them? Do you talk about “target segments” or “target customers” or “target demographics?”
Guess what? Your customers are not target anything. If you think your customers are men between the ages of 18 and 49, for example, you’re dead wrong. When it comes to understanding who customers are, what their needs are, what they’re trying to do/achieve with your organization, and how you’ll design a better experience, good luck with that! Targets are broad, ill-defined, and meaningless.
You can’t take a 30,000-foot view of your customers, which is what targets do. No, there’s a better way to describe your prospects or customers. You need to drill down deeper and develop personas, which will focus on the needs and jobs to be done by the customer.
“What’s a persona?” you ask. Grab a cup of coffee, and let’s dive in.
Personas are fictional characters created to describe your ideal prospect or actual customer. They are derived through primary research – research that can then also be used for your customer journey maps. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. They are descriptions that represent a behavioral segment and are specific to your business, not to the industry. The descriptions include vivid narratives, images, and other items that help companies understand the needs of the customer (contextual insights) and outline motivations, goals, behaviors, challenges, likes, dislikes, objections, and interests that drive buying (or other) decisions. And let’s not forget that each persona includes a human face and name.
A recent, much-talked-about persona is Jennifer, the quintessential Big Lots customer. Never hurts when the CEO is on board to talk about your ideal customer to anyone, much less on an earnings call to analysts.
“Why is all this important?” you might ask next. For a variety of reasons.
Personas…
I mentioned journey maps earlier. Personas and journey maps go together like peanut butter and jelly. Why? (I’ve intentionally repeated some of the bullets from above.)
Together, we get a full picture of who the customer is and what they are thinking, feeling, doing – experiencing.
I’ve heard that storyboards don’t get read or used for a variety of reasons, so it would seem that visualizing the experience with maps simplifies the connection from the customer (persona) to the experience.
Personas are the starting point for journey maps. Are they your starting point, too?
Not all those who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien