B2C - Customer persona

This canvas helps you better understand your customers so that:

  1. You can create a product that will better match their needs

  2. Be more efficient with marketing and sales efforts

Creating a persona is an iterative process. It is highly likely that you will need to conduct further user research to refine it. You may, therefore, start where you deem most appropriate such as the segmentation section or by defining current problems.

B2C versus B2B personas

With B2B (Business-to-Business) products, you are potentially selling to a group of people. These people may not be the end users of your product. In B2C (Business-to-Customer), this relationship is typically one-to-one. The buyer is likely to be the product user. There are some cases where the person paying doesn’t use the product, such as with parents buying for children. However, they can still have a major effect on what a parent buys. In this case, you would focus on creating a persona of the child.

Persona name and photograph

Personas are representations of people. To make them feel more real, it can be useful to name them. Use a real photograph of someone who represents your customer. Make sure this isn’t someone famous, as that will impact the way people think about them.

Persona description

This is a summary of the group of people they represent. For example, professional cyclist or junior school teacher.

Goal

This is a summary of what the customer is trying to achieve. Think about the overall job they want to achieve rather than the product. The job stays static whilst the solution changes. Consider the following job, I want to analyse my data quickly and efficiently:

Solutions

  • Excel

  • Database

  • etc.

By thinking like this, it allows us to get away from talking about products and their features. One of the reasons that innovation disrupts markets is that it is a better solution to a goal that someone has. The world is full of examples, like ploughing fields going from hand to horse driven to machine.

Problems

This is an overview of the main issues with current alternative solutions. This is a brief overview for your organisation and not a detailed analysis. This will form the key reasons why a customer may select you. There are two main options here:

  1. If they come mostly from old solutions, focus on the problems with these

  2. If they mostly have similar alternative solutions

    • Aggregate the weaknesses of these or highlight the key weaknesses of direct competitors

    • Targeted competitor analysis will give you more detailed insights into specific issues

Segmentation

What is product-market fit?

I’ll start with my own definition:

Product-market fit means you are providing a product or service to a group of customers that solves a big enough problem for them to want it.

How do I define a “market”?

What do I mean by “a group of customers” in the statement above? This “market” can be defined by people with the same needs or problems. Consider cyclists who keep getting punctures as an example. I have created a product to repair these punctures. Let’s look at the options to properly define these people i.e. the market:

  • Demographic segmentation - e.g. age, gender, income

  • Geographic segmentation - e.g. where you are from

  • Behavioural segmentation - e.g. time of year, usage, customer loyalty, benefits sought

  • Psychographic segmentation - e.g. social class, values, personality, activities and interests

It is a common anti-pattern to only consider demographic and geographic segmentation. Imagine my cyclists split like this:

The female countryside cyclist

  • Age: 18-40 years old

  • Location: countryside

  • Gender: female

The male city cyclist

  • Age: Over 40 years old

  • Location: city

  • Gender: male

I hope you can see that this way of segmenting isn’t helpful. The segmentation categories of Age, Location and Gender will not affect the type or frequency of punctures in any meaningful way. In other words, the product will not change based on these. We need segments that differentiate customers based on them having specific needs and problems. Consider a much better segment:

  • Professional cyclist

As a professional, the product must be light, fast to apply and as close to 100% successful on the first attempt. This could mean the difference between winning and losing a race.

Broad versus narrow targeting

In this case, I have narrowed my segmentation to a very specific group. The puncture repair market is already very established with a large number of products. I have, therefore, chosen to enter it with a more narrow focus to gain a competitive advantage.

Here are the considerations when selecting broad versus narrow:

  • Common needs – Always avoid a product that tries to meet too many different customer needs. Going for all cyclists, in this case, is likely to be too wide. Considering software products, you may be able to meet the needs of multiple customer groups. However, when starting out, you should target just one in order to release it to the market faster.

  • Product price - A customer who wants a very cheap product is unlikely to pay for a very good one regardless of its functionality and quality. It may be the case that they simply can’t afford the best option.

  • New innovation – If you can disrupt an entire industry with a new innovation, you may target more people. Your marketing spend is likely to be lower as word of mouth and free press coverage promote your product.

  • Market maturity – If the market is very mature, then going niche can help you stand out. Create differentiators for your target customers and focus your marketing and sales efforts.

  • Marketing and sales budget – If you have the ability to spend a great deal, you can reach a lot of people in a lot of different places and can go wider.

Persona anti-patterns

1) Not based on research

Making up personas is the number one anti-pattern. This means you have made a lot of assumptions about your customers or have based them on poor-quality information. If a product team wishes to get together and create personas, this is fine as long as they are validated later. Defining quantified problem statements is good practice as it requires research.

2) Irrelevant information

Talking about irrelevant information in personas, such as the fact that the person has a dog and enjoys walking. This information has no value to our product development. This anti-pattern is common when people want to bring that person to life, but it isn’t helpful.

3) Not using them in product development

You should look for real people who match your personas and then use them to test out ideas and new products. If you have a large product with many features, you may have a number of personas. When creating new features, these may be targeted more towards specific people. In this case, make it clear in your strategy which persona the feature is aimed at.

4) Not using them in product marketing

Consider where new customers can be reached, for example, the social media channels they are on, so you can target your messaging. You may also segment your current customer base and target marketing at those.

5) Not targeting specific personas

We have already discussed what a “market” is. Taking this further, we need to be focussed on who we are building and selling our product to. If we don’t do this, we end up with confusing feedback and too many wants and needs. Therefore we should avoid creating too many personas. Imagine having 10 and trying to make them all happy! Create personas for who you are selling to.

Summary

Personas are a powerful tool when used correctly. They can help everyone understand who you are selling to. They should be built into your design and testing processes. Just try to avoid their anti-patterns.