Five practical tips for the successful creation of personas

In our day-to-day market research, we encounter completely different target groups every day. From toilet stone buyers and traditional beer lovers to beauty queens, dentists and craftsmen. But despite all the differences, there is usually one thing we want: to better understand the desires and needs of these target groups so that we can offer them the perfect products or services.

The “persona method”, which we often use in our qualitative studies or workshops, is particularly suitable for immersing ourselves in different walks of life. But what exactly is a persona? Personas are fictitious, typical characters to which various characteristics are assigned and which represent a part of a target group. At advise, we usually develop several personas for our customers, since there are usually different subgroups within a target group, some of which differ greatly in their thinking and actions. To help you develop your personas, here are our five most important practical tips:

1. Collect as much target group information as possible

Personas are fictional characters, but they should be based on as much solid knowledge as possible. To do this, survey your target group and conduct a few interviews, for example, to get a feel for your target group and understand what your customers' needs are. Use insights from market research studies that have already been conducted, data from online shops, and ask your sales department about their experiences with customers. Anything that can help you draw conclusions about your target group or potential target group is helpful.

Quelle: ©Bigstock

2. Find similarities and locate your personas

Once you feel you know a bit about your target group, take this data as a basis and try to find similarities. Consider what subgroups might exist. Are there customer groups that are particularly demanding, innovation-loving or pragmatic? Even if some subgroups may be unattractive to you as a manufacturer or service provider, always try to formulate personas positively (i.e. not “Ansgar the Coward” but rather “Safety-loving Susi”). Create initial rough drafts of the personas and try to locate them on an axis. For example, you can take the dimension of how easy and accessible this persona is for your products. And on the other hand, how loyal this persona is. By initially locating them on an axis and directly juxtaposing them, the personas can be contrasted again and adjusted so that they are distinct. This will save you a lot of work and later provide clear distinctions between the personas. A slight exaggeration also helps.

3. Create profiles for your personas

After you have identified the different clusters, it is now time to create the personas based on profiles. Give your personas names, think about what there is to say about their private lives, family and hobbies. What interests and experiences does your persona have? What do they want to achieve in life? It is also important to include some information about your products and services. What are the persona's expectations of products or services in your category? What are the pain points and motives for buying a product? And how would they prefer to be addressed? You can download the following basic template from our download center:

Quelle: ©advise

4. Find suitable and realistic (!) photos

A well-developed persona description is the be-all and end-all. But to really bring it to life, look for selected photos that best match your persona description. Remember that personas should be ideal, but not necessarily perfect. In our experience, this is often a stumbling block, because sometimes you tend to idealize your own target group. But your target group doesn't just consist of perfectly styled “Matcha” mums or trendy hipsters, but also loving chaotic mums, where it is NOT perfectly tidy in the background and not a crumb can be seen on the floor. Anyone who has children knows what we are talking about 😊

Did you know? At advise, we generate persona photos by AI image programs. This enables us to create even more authentic and diverse customer profiles that are visually tailored to the description of the persona down to the smallest detail! There are no creative limits when it comes to appearance, clothing, mood or environment. AI can be used to bring the persona to life with unique images that cannot be found anywhere else. Does this sound interesting to you? Then feel free to contact us.

Quelle: ©advise

5. Live your personas

To help you empathize with the different personas, an internal company workshop can be useful. In this workshop, you can try to think your way into the different personas by means of role-playing. Play through different situations in which the different personas come into contact with your products and services and imagine how they feel in these moments and what information they need to become aware of you and be convinced. This will help you later to communicate the right content at the respective touchpoints and to respond to the respective needs of your consumers in the best possible way.

By the way: After creating personas for our customers' target groups, we go one step further: we use the personas we have created to create AI avatars that can introduce themselves in video form. This kind of presentation of your own profile is an eye-catcher in customer presentations. Speaking AI avatars make personas even more vivid and we offer them as an optional add-on.

We hope you enjoy creating your personas and wish you success. Please get in touch if you have any further questions or if we can support you in the creation process.

Quelle: ©advise, KI-generated Franzi Fröhlich