A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market _ Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs for impact

22/12/2018

A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer
Persona and zoom in on your market

Often times business people, and marketers even more, think about customers in terms of segments: young entrepreneurs,
mums at home, single professionals, you name it.
This can be useful to think broadly about who you're hoping to serve in the long run, but offers little value to plan and
execute on your next move.
The person that you're hoping to serve with your product is much more than a bunch of demographics: they are a
human being with problems, needs, goals, habits, that live and work in certain environments.
It's only when you truly understand that that you can hope to be effective at serving them well, which goes from reaching
out to them to creating a great experience for them.
This is universally true, even in a B2B setting you don't sell to corporations, it's a human being that cuts you a check and
that person will have his own agenda.
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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

What is Persona development?
Persona development is a process to represent in a usable format that information I mentioned above.
When I first spoke to FC she was targeting anybody with an internet line which is the equivalent of targeting
nobody as your offering will be lost in the noise.
Going through a Persona development exercise helped her bring clarity to her marketing and product development and
dramatically increased the odds of her startup.
There are various ways to put together a Persona archetype, but the one FC and I used is borrowed from Luxr.

But my product can really be used by anybody!
I get it, FC told me the same, I told the same to my first startup mentor. And it's true, I can see how years from now, if she's
successful, her product could be used by all sorts of people.
But not today.
Today she needs her first customer because without that she is never gonna get to next month, let alone years.
And likely the person that will want her product today is different than the one that will buy the product when she's an
established brand on the market. This is the idea of early adopters that I've expanded upon in this other post and won't go
into details here.

Persona sounds singular, do you always have only one?
Actually, most startups deal with more than one persona, often times at least two. In the case of FC she's looking at a
marketplace so at minimum she has a buyer and a seller. Now those might be the same persona, but also not, think of
Amazon Vs Ebay: on Ebay sellers can be buyers too, on Amazon most sellers aren't buyers and the way being a reseller on
Amazon works is different than selling something on Ebay.
In the case of a B2B product, for example an IT management system like I used to build, the persons that's cutting the
check is the CFO, but they have no clue about IT management so it will likely be the CTO to make the call. The user

however is the sysadmin, not the CTO, and he's gonna have a completely different outlook on your product.
Depending on the business, you can have as many as 5 personas:
1. decision maker - whoever decides to buy your product
2. economic buyer - the one with the money that will cut you the check
3. recommenders - which can be the decision maker herself or other peers
4. influencers - generally known figures in the industry your customer is in
5. end users - those that actually will use the product day in day out
This is often easier to picture if you're working in B2B with larger corporations, but it's actually true for B2C as well, just
think about your friends or husband/wife, especially in the case of a family product the decision maker can often not be the
economic buyer.

Customers Vs users
One special case of a multiple persona scenario that's worth highlighting is the one that's actually the cause of many
startups' failure: they have users, not customers.
A customer is someone that pays you, a user just uses your product. Any product hoping to make money from advertising
falls in this bucket with the people using the product being the users and the marketers being the customers.
In a case like this you have at minimum two personas and failing to be clear about it will kill your business. Furthermore
once you have the two persons with stated needs & goals it should also be more obvious how the two are potentially in
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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

conflict, a problem you'll have to deal with.

Your Persona is still a hypothesis to test
As much as you want to use all available information and develop a Persona that you're likely to be able to meet

somewhere (or possibly even know already), it still remains an hypothesis to test.
The most important thing you'll have to test for is obviously their needs and goals, which must be alined with your
product offering, but you may also find that the demographics you put down were incorrect or that the person doesn't
engage in the behaviors you thought they would.
Some of them you will have to specifically test for, others will just be side-effects of more important experiments, but it's
crucial that you treat what you wrote as a living document that you need to update based on the outcomes of your
experiments.

Luxr's Persona Development Framework
There are several frameworks to develop a persona and while most are very similar we all have our preferences and I
happen to favor Luxr's model.
This is what it'll look like in the end:

As you can see there are four sections to it:
1. Give it a face
2. Demographics
3. Behaviors
4. Needs & Goals
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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

The goal is to have a visual and contextual (to the problem you solve) representation of your customer, an idea of what that
person may look like, what things they engage with and what they are looking for (again in the context of the market you're
in).

Lets do an example on paper
You can do this in any way you want and later I will show you a couple of alternatives working on a wall or digitally with
Google docs, but I find paper to be the best compromise to quickly iterate over some ideas.

1. Preparing for the exercise
The base for the exercise is really simple, just copy from image below:

As far as filling the quadrants goes, you can think about stuff in your head and write it down into the boxes, but
experience suggests that it leads to poor results.
A much better method is to apply a technique called dump & sort.
This approach separates the creative phase from the analytic phase allowing you to go deeper and generate much richer
insights.

2. Give it a face
This box is all about visualizing your customer. There are four components to this:
1. a name
2. a face
3. a place
4. a bubble speech
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The face really means a face and a body, potentially clothing, accessories and gadgets. The idea if that if your persona
walks by you will instantly recognize her.
The name is another detail to render the persona more real and remind you that you are dealing with a human being and

not a market segment.
The place helps you give the whole thing a context, generally it's the location/setting where your persona will be using
your product.
The bubble speech is the finishing touch, externalizing the problem you're trying to solve.
By the time you're done your persona archetype should totally pop out, you should feel like you know this person
and could find a way to meet her tomorrow if you wished so.
As we move to the next quadrants keep referring to this drawing as you fill them in. Again, it's crucial that you keep
in mind we're talking about this person you just drawn and named, not some faceless, nameless manikin.

3. Facts
Think of facts as added information to identify your customer. They often take the form of demographics, but feel free to
add other relevant pieces of information. Classic examples are age, yearly income, where they live, marital status etc. This
may be more important for some products than others.
For example if your service is very expensive, lower income individuals might not be customers, especially early adopters.
If you are targeting certain locations instead, where they live or work may be of particular relevance.

4. Behaviors
As the name suggests, this box is all about behaviors your persona engages with. These should be written starting with an
active verb and should be actions that you can observe.
For example, she likes to read is not a valid behavior. Rather write that as she reads a book while sitting at the park on
sundays.
One very important thing to point out about behaviors is that they will often map to channels you can use to reach
your customers. For example in the case above it's obvious you should be able to find your persona in a park on sunday
mornings holding a book and reading.

5. Needs & Goals
In the context of your problem space, what does your persona want to accomplish? what does she need?
It's important to avoid to be too generic and put things in here that anybody would want and a lot of products would
provide like more money or more time.

Working on a wall
When we started with the example above I said paper was the best compromise. The actual best way to work in my
experience, alone but especially with a team, is on a wall with post-its and sharpies.
The is the best approach because it gives you space to add, remove and move things around and fits perfectly with the
dump & sort method we talked about.
You can either work on a wall by making the cross with duct tape or on a big whiteboard drawing the template like you did
on paper.
It will look something like this:

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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

An example on Google Docs
If you happen to be in a remote team, or need to go digital, that's fine as well and you don't need more than Google docs.
Here's a template you can use, but otherwise it's just a cross with 3 titles that you can quickly put together in Google
draw to your liking.
Once you've gone digital you may as well, one thing you may do here is to actually find an image rather than do a drawing,
this can make it even more real.

Free online workshop and Persona review
Would you like a free online workshop and build your archetype together?
I've done my best to explain the process I follow in my workshops, but I realize that sometimes written instructions aren't
enough so I'm making myself available during the next two weeks for an online session if enough people sign up.
If you'd like to participate leave your name and email below and I'll get in touch when quorum is reached with a date and
place for the hangout.

The Hangout event page is here. You can watch the past events on my YouTube Channel.
If you would like a free 1:1 session to help you build your persona or get feedback on what you already have just
book a call below.
It's as easy as picking a time that works for you and it won't cost you anything.

Spike is awesome! He got to the heart of our challenge quickly and provided our team with wonderful insight that helped
put us on a clear, straight path to getting our product to market - in just one phone call! Even better, Spike is a generous
man on an authentic mission to help people be successful in life and business.
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― Michelle May, Shenami

Spike was just great. He gave me the helicopter view of the path we are on, what we could choose to do now, and what lies
ahead. He was generous with suggesting practical steps for right now, and also things to work towards. I hope to talk with
him again.
― Carrie N Ballard, Utrecht Area, Netherlands

As soon as Spike started to speak - in a thoughtful, careful and considered way, I knew I was going to really benefit from
listening to him. Spike had some good answers to my questions around pricing and ways to look at it not only in terms of
finding a sweet spot, but also using it as a way to assert our values. And great follow up advice by email - thanks!
― Bridget Harris, YouCanBook.Me

I approached Spike unsure of what my next steps should be. He helped us to figure out just that and identify the key actions
to build an experience that will wow our customers. Spike also pointed out very interesting strategies for testing

monetization and getting that engine of growth going. Very useful. Thanks!
― Anders Hasselstrøm, StartupTravels, Denmark

Spike is incredibly insightful. He has a way of asking the right questions that gets you to see problems from a new
perspective and with greater clarity. Every conversation with Spike, I walk away with an 'Aha!' moment that helps me
move forward.
― Steven Kim, San Francisco

I am incredibly inspired by Spike's advice + expertise in regards to applying lean start-up to my business. Spike is very
knowledgeable, sharp and supportive. He's just the mentor we need and I am excited to be part of his mentoring program!
― Nicole Kasal, Cleanse Culture, Chicago
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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

Spike has a sharp mind and a well articulated analytic sense that cuts to the core of any question. The help he provided on
Startup Advice allowed me to clarify my goals and refine who I think my audience is. I highly recommend talking to
Spike!
― Paul V. Weinstein, Deal maker and fundraiser, SF

Spike asked hard questions and within the first few minutes of our conversation homed in on the core of most of my
confusion. I now have an actual plan of attack that will get me the information I need to make the right decisions to move
forward.
― Katrina Owen, exercism.io
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Recommended readings:
How to use the business model canvas correctly What's wrong with how startups approach the business model
canvas and how to use it correctly?
How to spot an early adopter and jumpstart your business Not all customers are equal and some will require others to
have joined before buying. Target the wrong ones and your business will never take off
The most effective value proposition template Learn an effective framework to express your value proposition such
that it clearly guides your product development and communication with your customers
You're confusing problem and solution and it's killing your startup. Here's the fix. Like most people you probably
started with a solution in mind, but did you take a step back and validated the problem first?
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Shine Ferrer • 3 years ago

Just a little typo The most important thing you'll have to test for is obviously their needs and goals, which must
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A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market | Spikelab.org - Mentoring social entrepreneurs…

be alined (should be aligned). I love your insights and your site! :)

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
John • 4 years ago

Hello Spike, the dump & sort link needs fixing.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
Spike Morelli

Mod

> John • 4 years ago

John, thanks for letting me know, I've fixed it.
1△

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silverfoxf7 • 4 years ago

Excellent framework. Ramli Solidum linked to you from our blog, and I'm revisiting this page because it's good
to get a refresher from time to time.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
Spike Morelli

Mod

> silverfoxf7 • 4 years ago

Thank you Jose, really happy this is useful. If you have any question or would like the guide to be
expanded to cover something you are currently battling with do let me know, I'd love to make it better.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
Alfred Lua • 5 years ago

Thanks for sharing such a great framework and explaining how to use it! I agree that developing a customer
persona is very important for startups so knowing such a framework is very helpful.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
Spike Morelli

Mod

> Alfred Lua • 5 years ago

Glad it was useful Alfred, that's all I care about. Let me know if there's anything else that could help
you on your startup journey.

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Tristan Kromer • 5 years ago

Janice and Jason will love this!

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