Would you buy shoes that are 2 sizes too small?
So, why do many companies create solutions that don’t fit their customers?
If a customer thinks your shoe doesn’t fit (or is made out of tissue paper) they’ll run a million miles. 🏃🏻♀️
Let’s solve this with a guide to help you:
- Create a proper customer / solution fit
- Win more customers
- Retain existing customers
- Reduce wasted time and cost creating something that nobody likes
- Make more $$$
There are many ways to skin a cat. This post focuses on one approach - using Customer Personas to craft a solution that will breathe life into your start-up (or larger corpo).
What is it?
Customer persona creation is simply creating one or more avatars that represent large portions of your potential target audience. Think of it like a Facebook profile. I’m gonna’ use this newsletter as an example. 🗞️
Why is it good at winning & keeping customers?
Doing the research to know your customers likes, dislikes, priorities, personality type, job, pressures, and pain points is vital. It helps you create a solution fit for their needs. It’s like driving with Google Maps or Waze. Sure, you can choose not to use navigation, but it’ll take you a lot longer to get to the destination you want (which is a large base of paying customers).
User personas are your businesses Google Maps.
It’s easy:
- Create personas that represent a significant chunk of your customers.
- Like Google Maps, use it to guide you in designing a solution tailored to customer needs.
- Customers are then more likely to use your solution cos’ it solves their specific challenges. They’ll even pay for it.
- You will then get more money. Simple. 💰
Great. What do I do?
Follow these steps. Each step has an example of how this applies to a Business themed Newsletter. Now, write down…
Your potential users / audience. 👨🏻 👩🏽
- Example (Business Newsletter): 9-5 workers, solopreneurs
Their likes. 👍🏻
- Example: Making money, working on their own terms, doing things quicker, having an outlet to relax, learning, new tech trends, programming, AI, ChatGPT, Large Language Models, building
Their dislikes. 👎🏻
- Example: boring unfulfilling work, micromanagement, nothing valued, not learning
Their priorities. ✅
- Example: Providing for family, securing their financial future / freedom, transitioning to a 9-5, gaining autonomy, advancing career or take home profit of solo business, marketing solo biz
Their personality. 😡 😃
- Example: Entrepreneurial, creative, strategic, provider, focused, tenacious
Their job. ✏️
- Example: Any 9-5 across the financial or change industry - roles like Banker, Relationship Manager, Product Manager, Project Manager, Operations, Analyst, Sales, Client Service, Change & Transformation Consultants etc. For solopreneurs, their business likely involves AI and heavy programming work to automate tasks for small to medium sized businesses and/or personal users
Their pressures. 😰
- Example: A large portion of 9-5ers have to provide for a family, cost of living pressures / inflation, redundancy risk. Solopreneurs have to deal with the risk of business collapsing or their value proposition being replaced by a massive corpo, lack of healthcare coverage, not having a safety net to fall back on
Their pain points. ❌
- Example: Lack of time to relax or focus on hobbies, not being up to date with existing technology, big corporations making solo business work redundant due to financial and resource superiority, low 9-5 salary in comparison to value provided
You can chop and change this dependent on where your users are located. It’s good practise to think of their physical location, as their persona will differ dependent on geography e.g. UK and US bankers may have different pain points to deal with. Create 2-3 personas that you believe capture roughly 70-80% of your potential customer.
Now you have a persona. Make sure to write this down with a pen or document in word, cos’ this is where it gets tasty… 😋
What next?
You can now design a solution to capitalise on our customer persona needs and pains, so that we win & keep users. Mo’ money, less problems (imo).
If you're interested in finding who your target audience are, discuss your needs with me on a free call!
