What’s a customer profile? How to build customer personas

What’s a customer profile? How to build customer personas

When you meet someone, you probably already have ideas about them in your mind.

You might have a friend who says, “You’ll like Cam, he’s a real foodie,” and this simple bit of information will allow a picture of this person to begin to form.

You don’t know Cam yet—but you know what type of person you’re expecting. And by adjusting your expectations, your friend has already gone some way to ensuring a smooth introduction between the two of you. It’s been three seconds, and you already know you’re probably not going to tell Cam that your favourite food is the kind of mac-n-cheese that comes in a box.

Customer profiling works a little like this. You learn some basic facts about your ideal customers, and that tells you how best to interact with them. You get to put your best foot forward by talking to them in a way that interests them, and they don’t have to hear about any, you know, metaphorical macaroni crimes.

The idea’s pretty straightforward: people who want the same service or product are probably alike in some ways, so you can group them accordingly. By knowing which groups your ideal customers fall into, you can talk to them in a way that focuses on what they like and what’s relevant to them.

So how do you do it?

Start with data. Unlike in the scenario with Cam, you don’t always get the benefit of an introduction from a trustworthy friend—you have to be a bit more methodical about it.

Some organisations commission market research or create surveys. Those are good, but we think you ought to start with what you know about existing customers. Looking at your own data is free, and free is good.

You’ll have some stored info about your customers, like how much they spend and what products or services they’re buying together. You might also have things like delivery post codes, where they work, or their history with your company over time.

To start with, group those common data points together. Build them out from there. If your customers have geographic locations or industries in common, you can start building your picture.

Build out from what information you can get

Goals and motives are a lot more difficult for us to figure out than post codes or industries, but having basic hard facts helps you build “softer” ones.

When you’re making profiles for your ideal customers, it’s not just their demographics or the turnover of the company they work for that you need to think about. You should be thinking about why these people are buying your product or service, and what benefit they’re getting from it.

This kind of information gives you a guideline for putting your best foot forward when you contact new people who are like them.

You’re looking to answer questions like:

• Why have your existing customers picked your service over someone else’s?
• What problems is your product solving for these people?
• What’s the commonest way they use your service? Is it what you expected?

Your customers will give you feedback sometimes—listen to them!

This point kind of speaks for itself. Make sure your business has some kind of feedback collection point in place, and then when feedback comes in, use it to understand your current customers—and then to understand your future customers.

Relevant information will include stuff like use cases, accessibility concerns, or information that they couldn’t find about the product. Use it to add to your customer profiles.

Build your personas

Profiling is the activity you do to make what’re called personas. A “persona” is a label that includes all those traits that, when grouped together, represent one kind of typical customer.

More fleshed-out, complete personas give you a better idea of what kinds of people you’re going to be contacting. Think about things like:

• Company size
• Technology stack
• Job roles
• Industry codes
• Geographic location
• Financials like income range or revenue
• Psychographics like goals, interests, motivations, and challenges
• Interaction with your services, like how often, by what means, and why they might use your product or service
• The best communication channels for these customers
• Promotions or specific content that appeals to them

Give each one a name, so you have an easy way to refer to each persona.

From here, you’ll be able to come up with a short list of options for contacting this kind of customer and what they’ll be most receptive to!

Lastly, remember that profiling is going to be iterative, not static. The world around us changes daily and so too will your customers, so you’ll need to make sure your customer personas are keeping up.