In today's competitive marketplace, the persona in business can become a crucial tool for any business aiming to enhance its branding and product development. By crafting a detailed persona, companies can gain deeper insights into their target audience, improving engagement and optimizing marketing strategies. Persona is often used as buyer persona, user persona, etc. But in this article, I will talk about the generic definition of persona, which should cover all situations and use cases of different personas.

My name is Taishi Hasegawa. And today, I’m going to share how we applied persona in the fintech project, Taishi.io, that our team had worked on. We do have a dedicated page about the Taishi.io project as part of our team’s works so please enjoy reading that post through this link here as well. For comprehensive content about Design Thinking, please visit another blog of ours, Design Thinking: Enhancing Business and Brand Strategy.

Importance of Persona in Brand Strategy

A well-defined persona can significantly influence a brand's strategic decisions. It provides a detailed profile of key customer segments, allowing businesses to tailor their marketing efforts and product developments to meet the specific needs and preferences of their target audience, resulting in a stronger market presence.

Persona is a semi-fictional character created based on research to represent different user types that might use a service, product, or brand in a similar way. Alan Cooper introduced the concept of persona in his book "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum," and it has since been widely adopted in fields ranging from web development to marketing.

Creating Effective User Personas

Developing impactful user persona involves several key steps:

Collect Comprehensive Data:

Use both quantitative and qualitative research methods to gather detailed data about potential customers. This includes interviews, surveys, and analysis of existing customer data. The data collected will form the foundation of each persona.

Analyze and Segment:

Break down the data to identify distinct behaviors, preferences, and needs that characterize different segments of the market. Look for patterns that reveal insights about various user types, helping to create an accurate persona.

Detail Each Persona:

Create in-depth profiles for each persona, including demographic details, behavioral patterns, motivations, and goals. These profiles should be realistic and relatable, with a combination of factual data and fictional elements to make them seem like real people.

Example of a Persona:

Mook is a 30-year-old university student living with her parents and sister in Nonthaburi. She is in her fourth year, majoring in dentistry, which involves a lot of experiments and examinations. Additionally, she is part of the stock investment club and has been investing since she graduated university. She used to enjoy spending time shopping with her earnings, but investment has changed her behavior in consumption, and she has been proud of it. She has a strict future plan for retirement and seeks support and assistance from experts through her personal social circle. This persona helps in understanding the needs and behaviors of similar users who are also the target audience of Taishi.io’s unique selling point.

Utilizing Personas for Targeted Marketing

With a well-crafted persona, marketing teams can design highly targeted campaigns that resonate more effectively with different segments of the audience. This focused approach not only improves engagement but also enhances the efficiency of marketing resources, leading to better returns on investment.

Persona helps in creating more personalized and relevant marketing messages. By understanding the specific needs and preferences of each persona, marketers can craft messages that speak directly to their audience's pain points and desires. This level of personalization can significantly increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Leveraging Personas in Product Development

Persona is also invaluable in product development. By understanding the preferences and needs of each persona, companies can design products that better meet the expectations of their target market, thereby increasing satisfaction and loyalty.

When developing new products or improving existing ones, persona provides clear guidance on what features and functionalities are most important to the target audience. This ensures that the end product is user-friendly and highly valued by the intended users.

Evaluating the Impact of Personas on Positioning in Marketing

Effectively used, persona can help businesses refine their market positioning. They provide clarity on how to differentiate from competitors and how to communicate the brand's unique value propositions clearly and compellingly.

Persona helps identify what aspects of a product or service are most appealing to different segments of the market. This allows businesses to highlight these aspects in their marketing efforts, ensuring that their messaging is both relevant and compelling.

Steps to Create and Use Personas

Define Goals and Context:

Establish the purpose of creating a persona and the specific context in which it will be used, such as marketing campaigns or product development.

Gather Data:

Conduct user research through interviews, surveys, and observations to collect data on user behaviors, needs, and motivations. This data is crucial for building an accurate persona.

Identify Patterns:

Analyze the data to find common patterns and group users into segments based on their similarities. Identifying these patterns helps in developing a persona that accurately represents your target audience.

Create Detailed Profiles:

Develop comprehensive profiles for each persona, including a name, age, occupation, background, and key characteristics. Use realistic names and photos to make them relatable. These profiles should vividly describe each persona to ensure they are useful tools for your team.

Prioritize Personas:

Assign priority to each persona based on their relevance to your business goals. The primary persona should be the main focus, with secondary personas providing additional insights. Prioritizing helps in focusing on the most impactful persona.

Implement in Strategy:

Use persona to guide strategic decisions in marketing, product development, and customer service. Ensure that all team members understand and utilize the persona in their work. Incorporating persona into your strategy ensures that your efforts are aligned with the needs of your target audience.

Conclusion

Integrating insights in persona into product development, marketing strategies and even operations is essential for businesses. By aligning your business efforts with their nuanced needs and preferences, you can achieve more engagement and maintain a stronger competitive edge over competitors who don’t have these insights.

If you’re interested in the impact of a persona but are too lazy to learn how to craft it and apply it into real use, contact us for expert guidance and advice. We are more than happy to help.

Credit

Primary author: Taishi Hasegawa - CEO at Wyld.

Author assistant: Manusavee Sattha - Assistant to CEO at Wyld.

Graphic by: Patsorn Arayaluck - Graphic designer at Wyld.

Persona: Enhancing Brand Strategy and Market Positioning