How to Use Personas to Improve the Customer Experience

Customer personas are a vital tool that can be used for a variety of business functions, from marketing to customer service. They are detailed representations of your customer base, in which your existing customers are organised into categories based on core demographics and behaviours.

Developing a strong suite of customer personas allows you to create a customer experience that’s highly relevant to the people using your products and services, which strengthens all your customer interactions, from acquisition to customer loyalty.

Here, we’ll discuss the different types of customer personas, why they’re an essential part of your toolkit, and look at how to create customer personas that will drive results.

Get in touch to find out how Red Letter Days Corporate can help build bespoke experience packages that are highly relevant to your customer base.

What are Customer Personas?

Customer personas are representations of your existing customers (and can also include the customers you want to target). They’re established by dividing your customer base into categories based on a variety of things, including:

• Demographics, such as age, gender, and household income
• Buyer behaviour, such as average order value, purchasing cycles, and repeat sales
• Lifestyle factors, such as activity level, digital literacy, and hobbies
• Brand expectations, such as level of quality, customer interaction, and service offering

Based on the patterns that emerge across these core aspects, you can create a set of customer personas. They can be general descriptions of this customer segment, or you can go even further and create a fictional “character” that represents this persona.

Each persona should give you a very clear idea of who these types of customers are and how they interact with your business. You should be able to identify what they want, what obstacles might get in their way, how they like to shop, what they’re looking for, and what they’re influenced by.

Types of Customer Personas

The term ‘customer persona’ is a general concept that is often interchanged with other titles, such as ‘buyer persona’, ‘marketing persona’, and ‘user persona’. While each of these titles captures the overall definition of a customer persona, they tend to be used in different ways.

Buyer personas

Buyer personas define your core customer base – these are the people who buy your products. Typically, you will have multiple buyer personas that reflect the variety of customers you cater to. Buyer personas should capture the personas of people who shop for different products and services you offer, or interact with your products in different ways.

For example, a project management software company might have a freelancer buyer persona, which covers customers who require project management for their own, small-scale personal use, alongside a corporate buyer persona, who require services for a larger group of people. Both of these personas require access to the same product but will likely respond better to different types of marketing and communication.

User personas

User personas are similar to customer or buyer personas in that they’re representations of the types of customers who you cater to, but with a specific focus on online behaviour.

When developing user personas, it’s all about looking at your customers as users of your website and considering how you can optimise your online experience for these specific customer types.

For example, you might have a younger user persona who is extremely tech-savvy and prefers to access their website on their mobile phone, alongside a corporate user persona who spends more time at their desktop computer. Once you have established these personas and behaviours, you can cater your online experience to these different types of users.

Marketing personas

Marketing personas, customer personas, and buyer personas are often used interchangeably. When the term ‘marketing persona’ is used, it is often geared towards marketing activity specifically.

To develop marketing personas for your customers, consider how certain customer personas will respond to marketing activity such as ads, social media, emails, and videos.

For example, one persona may be very active on email and respond well to newsletters and promotions delivered to their inbox, whereas another persona may be more likely to engage with specific social media channels. Once you have a clear understanding of your marketing personas, you can craft targeted campaigns and messaging to speak directly to these customers.

Negative personas

Negative personas operate in the same way as customer personas in that they capture customer details and behaviour – but instead of focussing on your ideal or existing customers, negative personas focus on the customers that are not right for your product.

When developing negative personas, look at people who are the opposite of your ideal or target customers. Creating personas to represent these people can help you to understand who you should avoid targeting and areas where you don’t need to waste resources.

For example, a company that sells pet food might have negative personas that include people who don’t own pets. This helps you to omit these types of people from marketing spend or acquisition efforts.

The Benefits of Using Customer Personas

Customer personas are beneficial across many aspects of your business as they give your team a very clear idea of who they should be targeting and how you can adapt your strategies to speak to these specific types of people.

Personalised Marketing

Customer personas are crucial for personalised marketing as they allow you to understand how to connect with different types of customers in the most appealing way.

Once you know what your customers are looking for and how they like to engage with your brand, you can create campaigns and interactions that will resonate with them. This could include:

• Targeted promotions for each customer persona, such as digital ad campaigns
• Differentiated messaging across shared channels, such as email campaigns for different customer segments
• Specific strategies in specific channels, such as targeted ads or social media communications

Increased Customer Engagement

You can use customer personas to optimise the way you communicate with your existing customers to help create a great customer experience that encourages retention and loyalty.

Once you understand how your customers interact with your brand, you can present them with the content, products, and services that are most relevant to them. This includes:

• Offering promotions and incentives that make sense for the way they like to shop or interact with your products
• Creating a loyalty program that is strongly connected to your specific customer types by providing them with rewards and incentives that are relevant to them, such as personalised experiences that connect to specific customer personas
• Communicating in the way that suits them best in order to create a strong sense of mutual respect and connection

Efficient Product Design

Customer personas can help inform your product development team to ensure that the products and services you offer are working well for your customers. When you understand what they’re looking for, what works well, and what they’re missing, you can shape your future products to suit specific personas.

This allows you to solve problems that your customers have and avoid creating pain points in the process, which differentiates you from your competitors and fosters a strong sense of satisfaction.

Improved Customer Experience

Customer personas should inform every aspect of your customer journey, so you can design a user experience that caters directly for your audience. This can take shape in many different ways, from marketing to the post-purchase service offering.

Some key ways to use customer personas for a great customer experience include:

• Rolling out more relevant marketing campaigns that include personalised customer incentives
• Creating content that resonates with each of your different customer personas, such as social media posts, how-to videos, and long-form guides
• Crafting a tone of voice and design style that appeals to your customers so they can connect with your brand
• Ensuring your user experience makes sense for the demographic you’re speaking to and adapting it accordingly
• Bolstering your customer service team with information and strategies so they can adapt their efforts and communication style to suit different personas

How to Create Customer Personas

Customer personas can support your business at every level, from new customer acquisition and marketing to retention and loyalty. It’s important to invest the time and effort to get it right, to ensure you’re building out an accurate representation of your audience.

When developing customer personas, it’s also important to approach the process with an open mind and cast off any expectations or preconceived notions that you might have about who your customers are so you can allow the data to shape an accurate portrayal.

Research your customers

Great customer personas begin with great data. Gather as much information as you can to understand who your customers are and how they feel:

• Use analytics tools: There are many user-friendly tools that you can implement, which will organise your data and present you with key aspects such as customer demographics and user behaviour
• Conduct surveys: Ask your customers targeted questions that will help you understand more about their feelings, both about your products and their general shopping behaviour
• Customer interviews: Conduct in-depth focus groups and ask your audience about their goals, challenges, likes, dislikes, and values

Analyse your data

Once you have gathered in-depth data about your customer base, analyse and organise it based on trends and commonalities. Look for ways to categorise your information based on demographics, behaviour, thought patterns, and sentiment.

There are many different platforms out there that can help with this, from Google Analytics to social media tools such as Facebook Audience Insights. There’s a good chance you already have data stored and ready for your review – be sure to find it and compile it all for a strong, overarching picture.

Build persona profiles

Once you have gathered and organised your data, you will likely start to see patterns emerge. Identify core themes or types and use this as a starting point for your customer personas.

There are many platforms and tools that you can use, as well as free online templates that offer a great starting point. Be specific but make sure you’re crafting an honest, value-adding assessment that includes:

• Demographic details, such as personal and professional information
• Values, such as what they believe in and what’s important to them
• Goals and priorities, such as what they’re trying to achieve and what shapes their decision making
• Challenges and pain points, such as what bothers them and what stops them from acting

You can get creative and shape your customer personas in a way that makes sense for your brand and your team, whether it’s a general overview or a specific character with a name and a face.

Keep the Data Updated

Make sure to revisit your personas regularly – we don’t need to tell you that things change quickly, and your customers will grow alongside technological developments, world events, new products and brands, and other shifts within your industry.

Continue to look at your data, monitor the success of the strategies that you implement using your customer personas, and update accordingly. As your business grows and changes, you might find that you need to add new personas or alter existing ones.

How we can help create relevant, bespoke customer experiences

Once you understand who your customers are and what they’re looking for, you can deliver it to them in a variety of ways. Personalised experiences can support many different aspects of your marketing and customer engagement strategy, from promotions and incentives for new customers to loyalty programs designed to drive retention.

Get in touch with our team to find out how we can help you strengthen your customer experience and drive customer loyalty.