How to Build a Persona: Required Elements and Worked Examples

The persona plays an important part in marketing strategy.
Many people, though, do not have a firm grasp of what a persona is, or of how to set one.

This article explains the basics of personas and how to set them, in detail.
Use it to set personas that work.

Related article:
What is HubSpot’s persona creation tool? How to build one and put it to use

1. Persona basics

1.1 What is a persona?

Persona originally means mask in Latin, the mask an actor wears on stage,
and is defined as a person’s outer side, the self that lies within.

From there, in marketing it stands for
the person who will buy your own goods, products or services — a fictional picture of a user.
The distinctive thing is that the persona is set in enough detail to feel like a real person: typically age and gender plus occupation, lifestyle, values and behaviour, household make-up and so on, all made concrete.

Developing products that meet the needs of the persona you have set is called persona analysis, and many companies have taken the method up.
Persona analysis lets you decide clearly what content to publish, which is why the persona plays an important part in marketing.

1.2 How does a persona differ from a target? Examples of personas

Target is a word often confused with persona. The big difference is the attributes and the audience you want to make your case to. A persona points to one human being, a fictional figure; a target points to a group of people with attributes that really exist.
A persona is part of setting a target, and goes deeper, setting the figure out in more detail.

Here is an example of each, target and persona.

■ Target:
　Women in their thirties, married

■ Persona:
　Age → 37
　Gender → female
　Where she lives → Tokyo
　Household → husband and a five-year-old boy
　Occupation → nurse
　Hobby → camping
　Plus details such as which social networks she uses, her relationships and her character.

We hope that was useful.
Set a persona out concretely and in detail and you learn everything from lifestyle and hobbies to when she watches television or goes online and where she shops.
And as a result you can make products and services that land more deeply with people close to that persona.

2. Why you set a persona

Why is a persona needed in this much detail?
There are three points to make about why you set a persona.

① It improves the results of marketing activity
② It builds shared understanding in the development team
③ It delivers services that answer user needs

Each in turn.

① It improves the results of marketing activity
The first reason to set a persona is to improve the results of marketing activity.
In marketing, above all else what matters is understanding correctly the needs of the users of your product or service, and getting the right message to them
Building a persona deepens your understanding of users.
It becomes easier to think concretely about which approaches get a response, and when to publish so that interest comes at the right moment.
As a result the project’s direction is easier to settle, and you can run the marketing that promises the most.
As marketing gets more precise, the direction of the work that follows also becomes clear.
That makes the work more efficient, and cuts both working hours and the cost of carrying it out.
Promotion methods can be made concrete too, so budget is allocated properly and nothing is wasted.

② It builds shared understanding in the development team
The second point is that it builds shared understanding in the development team.
Many people are involved in development.
To get everyone pointing the same way, they need the same picture of the customer.
Say only “we are making a product for women in their thirties”, and every person pictures a different woman in her thirties.
A simple target, then, leaves room for different readings depending on who is looking.
That can lead to trouble: opinions that will not come together, wasted work, a slipping schedule.
Sharing a concrete persona with everyone involved makes misalignment unlikely, and the project runs smoothly.

③ It delivers services that answer user needs
The third point is that it makes product development from the user’s point of view possible.
Build the target carefully and it becomes easy to picture concrete things: the customer’s situation, state of mind, circumstances and lifestyle.
Take the persona set out above, the woman in her thirties: “She feels the stress of heavy responsibility and night shifts. With a child to care for she is busy, but camping with the family at the weekend refreshes her.
Lately she has been conscious of healthy eating for the family’s sake too.” You can picture her in that much detail.
Then it becomes easier to work out what kind of approach would be welcome to get her interested in your product, and when to publish so the information reaches her.
A hard sell that pushes your own products and services at the customer will not satisfy anyone.
Persona analysis leads you to offer the content customers really want.

That covers why you set a persona. So what happens without one?
If the figure you want to approach stops at a target rather than a persona, and is set broadly,
the product concept ends up vague.
The case you make then weakens, and risks landing with no consumer at all.
Set a persona and narrow development towards a concrete figure, and you can offer the services and products customers want.

3. The fields a persona needs, and how to set them

3.1 The fields a persona needs

Here are some of the fields you need when setting a persona
・Age
・Gender
・Occupation / job title
・Annual income
・Address
・Hobbies (more than one is fine)
・Relationships and household make-up
・Daily routines
・Lifestyle (when she wakes and goes to bed, commute, working hours, how she spends days off)
・Social networks used
・How she gathers information
・Films watched often
・Video channels
・Favourite brands
・ Recent worries (more than one is fine)
・Hopes for the future

With the fields clear, here is how to set a persona in practice, in detail.

3.2 How to set a persona

1. Gather information about the person you want as your persona

The crucial part of deciding a persona is gathering the information that pins the figure down.
Collect as much as you can and set a persona that is thoroughly real.
The ways to gather it are as follows.

① Gathering information from customers
② Gathering information from the sales team
③ Analysing internal data
④ Using government and think-tank data
⑤ Checking reactions on search engines and social networks

Each in detail.

① Gathering information from customers
Interviewing customers directly has become far easier of late with video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Google Meet.

Interviewing both existing customers and prospects gives you an accurate reading of the customer’s voice.
Existing customers can be picked from your internal customer list, and prospects can be found through crowdsourcing services such as Visasq and CrowdWorks, or a business network such as Spready.

Alongside basic customer information, do ask about the first thing that made them interested in your product or service, the information they gathered while considering it, the search keywords they used, and what made them buy.

Beyond interviews there is also user testing, where you have someone visit the actual website and film what they do.
Where did the customer stop? Which information confused them, and why did they do something unexpected?
Make a point of finding the reason behind the behaviour.

If you want a quantitative reading of the customer’s voice, a survey works.
Surveys do make it harder than interviews to grasp insight, the “why do you think that”. If you run one, include a free-text field and dig into those answers; that gives you a denser user interview.

If you want feedback with more substance still, giving existing customers early access to a new product or feature and asking their opinion also works.
Those opinions can be used, when you actually launch the product or service, in your marketing message, in the case you make for the benefits, and as case studies of early adopters.
Hearing from customers early is effective as marketing activity in its own right, so do it.

② Gathering information from the sales team
Asking the sales team, who meet customers often, also works.
The people who understand customers best inside a company are usually those with the most contact with them: sales and user support.
As well as interviewing customers, interview the sales team.
You get both sides: where the two agree, and where there is a gap.
Gathering information from another angle may reveal new customer needs and characteristics.

Alongside basic information such as the salesperson’s own attributes, the things to cover are what prompted the customer to consider the service and the problems they carry, the points that land with customers, whether they had heard of you, and what competitors are like —
do ask about these.

If there is a sales meeting, sit in where you can. Seeing the meeting itself and what the customer says is highly effective.

③ Analysing internal data
Rather than only running new surveys and interviews, if you already hold data on your customers, combining it with what the surveys and interviews gave you works well.
When you use existing data, watch its accuracy.
You also need to analyse it again objectively — checking the date the survey was run, asking whether it is credible. Reflect the tendencies the two sets of data show, and gather more accurate data that way.

④ Using government and think-tank data
Survey data published by the government, statistics and the like, may also be worth a look.

⑤ Checking reactions on search engines and social networks
More and more people post their impressions of products and how they found them on social networks.
Search for your own products and services and related keywords, and see what is there.
If there is a lot being posted about them, regular monitoring is worth setting up.
There are tools such as Social Dog that pick keywords up automatically; do make use of them.
Social networks are the user’s voice unfiltered, which makes them valuable data. Do gather them actively.

Review sites, too, carry word of mouth written by customers who actually use the service.
Reading that word of mouth deepens your understanding of customers.

2. Organise the information

With the gathering done, organise the information.
From the mass of data you have, classify it and pick what to keep, narrowing it to what you need. The customer voices you gathered carry the character of the method used, so pull the results together by method.

3. Finish the persona

Finally, use the organised data to build the persona.
Working from what you have, write out the skeleton of the persona: gender, age, household, occupation.
At this point, making a photograph or illustration as well as text helps people picture her more concretely.
A visual image is effective at reducing differences in how the team understands the persona.

Always test the finished persona, too. It may be worth checking whether the figure feels real, and how many such people actually exist.
If the test shows it is not finished enough, go back to gathering information.

Reference: HubSpot persona creation tool

4. Points to watch when setting a persona

Finally, three points to watch when setting a persona.

4.1 The accuracy of the data you gather

The first is watch the accuracy of the data you gather.
A persona changes a great deal with the content of the data you gather.
The accuracy of that data is therefore an important point.
To gather accurate information, you have to keep it from skewing.
Survey and interview as many people as you can.
Using published statistics on the internet is another route.
When you gather word of mouth from social networks and the internet, judge as you go whether what was posted is what the person really thinks, and pull it together on that basis.

4.2 A persona that is realistic and concrete

The second point to watch when setting a persona is setting a realistic, concrete persona accurately
Without a realistic persona you will not get the promotional effect you want.
The easy mistake is to build a persona out of ideals and assumptions.
Avoid reflecting only the data that suits you and ending up with a convenient, idealised persona.
If you cannot set it objectively, it will drift away from what consumers really need.
Aim, too, for a user you can set out concretely and clearly.
In setting a persona, what matters is adding elements such as character, values and tastes to build up one figure who feels more real.

4.3 Review it regularly

A persona is not finished once it is made; it needs reviewing regularly
Customer behaviour can always shift with the environment and the state of the market.
It is common for the figure you had in mind when you first built the persona to diverge from the figure today.
So polish the persona regularly and keep up with changes in society.

5. In summary

We have covered the basics of personas and how to set them.
To lead marketing to success you have to understand customer needs precisely.
That calls for a concrete persona.
Setting a persona takes time and money and is no simple job, but with user needs growing more complex and more blurred, it is well worth using.
Use this article as a reference and set a persona that works.