The Importance of Client Personas

When it comes to running a business, there is a seemingly endless list of tasks to complete, from formulating a business plan to building a team to establishing processes. A key aspect that’s often overlooked, however, is nailing down who specifically you’re selling to. Every leader understands who their basic client base is—a local hardware store will sell to builders and DIYers, for example. But to get the most bang for your marketing buck and maximize your company’s overall efficiency, you need to know who your ideal client is by creating a persona for them.

The pluses of a client persona

For perspective, consider those businesspeople whose survival literally depends on growth: farmers and landscapers. When planting their respective seeds, these experts don’t just scatter them randomly and hope for the best. They know with pinpoint accuracy which ones thrive best in which soil and climate to yield the ideal crop. In essence, that’s what persona creation does for a business—when you seek to understand who your customers are at a micro level, it provides big-picture benefits.

Knowing which client base to pursue and nurture will be vital to your success for a few reasons. First, it will give your team members a precise target audience when developing sales pitches, designs, marketing, and social media posts and videos. Rather than making an educated guess on how best to relate to clients through the script, look, and messaging, they can approach each task with confidence, certain that they are connecting to the right people the right way. Just as important, having a persona locked in will make your clients happier since it will consistently demonstrate that your company knows them and their needs. In turn, they may grow to trust you above your competitors and become loyal patrons, bringing you both repeat business and valuable referrals.

How to determine your ideal client

To ensure that you’re planting your customer-targeting seeds in fertile ground, you should first learn more about your current clients. Some of the crucial data to accumulate and pore over are age, gender, education, household size, location, job, field, and income. In addition, dig deeper to get more subjective yet equally valuable information, such as their needs, values, motivations, and, yes, even pain points concerning your business or industry. In short, you’ll want to discover as much as possible about their purchasing journey from beginning to end along with everything that influences it. Put yourself in their shoes to understand how they think and feel, and you’ll more easily anticipate their goals and potential obstacles when it comes to purchasing your products or services.

A good place to start is by asking the tried-and-true reporter’s questions. You surely know your own company’s why (i.e., mission), what (products and services), and how (vision), but how well do you know your customers’ respective answers regarding their purchasing decisions? To find out, consider such questions from their perspective: Who are they as people? What are their values and motivations? How can you best communicate with them? Why would they choose your company over the competition or vice versa? You should also take into account their when tendencies—such as when they’re likely to open emails and respond to them and when their habits change (perhaps during the holidays)—and where considerations like where they like to shop and spend their time on social media.

There are several ways to gather such targeted information. Do surveys, interviews, and even focus groups to hear directly from customers, and combine that gold mine of feedback with quantitative resources such as web analytics. And don’t forget to seek the opinions of the people in your company who understand your clients best: your sales and retention teams. They can tell you from firsthand experience who knows, likes, and trusts your brand, who doesn’t, and the reasons why.

Search for patterns in your findings

Once you have gathered both qualitative and quantitative information, sit down with your team to identify areas of common ground among your current and past customers. For instance, does a large percentage of them skew older? Do most live in metropolitan areas? As you discover similarities, add them to your ideal client persona until you have a well-defined profile of who is best suited for what you provide. If you notice multiple critical findings emerging, consider branching out to create secondary personas. Just remember to stay true to your brand’s overall look and feel, message, and mission across each one to prevent customer confusion.

Keep your ideal client persona fresh

There’s an old axiom that says change is the only constant in life—and those winds of change often arrive suddenly in the business world, ushering in shifting values and needs with them. So be sure to revisit your customer personas at least annually to make sure you’re still targeting your ideal audience. Continually keeping this valuable information up to date can help you maximize your success, allowing your company to reach the people who want to hear from it most.

TAKE ACTION:
Sit down with your team to determine the most efficient way to get quantitative and qualitative data for determining your business’s ideal customer persona.