Learn how to create a Customer Proto-Persona(s)
What
Before we start let me say this, Proto-Personas are your best GUESS at who you think your customer is.
Proto-personas are informed by market research and stakeholders within your company and or your client’s company. That means you're going to hear a lot of assumptions. Assumptions are just that, they’re a collection of biases informed by subjective observations from people other than your customers. So unless you’re a soothsayer you’ll want to launch, test, learn and iterate these personas over time.
Why
Understanding who your customer is enables you to tailor your products and or services.
How to do it
Step 1: Organize your target customers by their key traits
These are people identified as being interested in your product and or service. Each persona you’ll create contains but is not necessarily limited to;
Customer's Core Characteristics
- Yrs. of job experience
- Risk Tolerance
- Education Level
- Ambition Level
Customer's Profile
- Job Role
- Age
- Location
- Marital Status
- Income Level
Beliefs
Behaviors
- Past and present want
Goals
- Future needs
Ambitions
- Future want
Step2: Research your potential customers
To derive your Proto-Personas I recommend a confluence of market research, talking to stakeholders and general secondary research (Reading reports from research firms like Forrester, Think With Google, etc.) which helps you determine;
- An understanding of what people will and or won’t buy
- Provides business insights early on
- Broad insight into a given market segment
Customer research techniques include but are not limited to;
- Customer Surveys
- Customer Interviews
- Competitive Analysis
Customer persona research surveys
In your surveys, you’ll want to understand what drives your potential prospects through the inbound funnel to make a purchase decision, adopt your product and use it often. Here’s the thing, surveys by no means are a one size fits all, so it's up to you ask questions that suit your perceived audience.
Customer Recruitment
I’d recommend using the following services for recruitment. Make sure that you include incentives for respondents. Forex. A 25.00 USD Amazon gift card for each successful survey completed.
Synthesizing your customer research results into a single design
Once you’ve conducted your interviews look for common themes amongst them, and through this begin sorting out the prevalent ones. This sorting on its own typically produces particular persona categories, giving you, on average, a range of 3 persona types with some potential outliers.
When done you should narrow your personas down to a minimum of three and each of your customer proto-personas should look something like this.
