The Importance of Personas

Author: Chris Ashworth Competitive Advantage

Persona: An aspect of the personality as shown to or perceived by others. – The Concise Oxford Dictionary

In recent years ‘Personas’ have become well established as part of the marketing lexicon. Their popularity follows behind marketing automation systems which encourage the use of personas to help direct communications to the right people in a way that will engage. But they have the potential to do much more than be some stereotypical groups which you target. That said, assigning names and images to your personas does provide a useful shorthand when talking about them within the organisation.

This first step is to understand the journey which that category of decision maker went through to become suitably qualified to take on their role. How they gained their qualification, the professional bodies they are members of, typical job roles they will hold and the types of organisations they can work for. All of this helps to paint the background to the typical decision maker. Adding personality profiles for that role add another dimension.

Then there are the tools they use. In the literal sense this might be the tools of a tradesman, identifying aids that could be provided to help them do their job or for popular give-aways. More likely it will be the digital tools like BIM, or product specifications, identifying what support and downloads need to be provided.

And of course, there are the industry drivers. Creating good design, understanding and meeting the legislation or delivering projects on time and to budget are typical examples.

Then its time to personalise to your specific business and the solutions you offer. What can you do to help them? And what form will that take? For a specifier it might be a technical seminar with CPD accreditation, for an installer it might be training on product installation and for a merchant it might point of sale.

There is also justification for sub-dividing your personas into the younger recently qualified person, the more established team leader and the experienced senior person who spends most of their time managing others. The message designed for one of these may well not work for the others.

And the persona is not just for the marketing team. Apart from the benefit of talking the same internal language, if the sales team adopt them as well they are a shorthand for talking about customers and can form a useful part of the induction programme for new joiners.

It sounds like a lot of work, and initially it is. But it is well worth the investment in time to ensure that you communicate the right message, at the right time, to the right person, every time.

Chris Ashworth is a CIMCIG Committee member and founder of Competitive Advantage Consultancy which provides market information, training and consultancy services specifically for building product manufacturers, and has produced a series of standard industry personas for the construction sector.