persona

A persona is a representation of your customer. Through user research, and collecting online data you can discover what your ideal customers have in common, like salary, aspirations, needs, etc. Once you have a good idea of these attributes, you can start to build your user persona which will embody them.

Types and examples of persona:

1. Marketing personas

These are used to summarise customer segments based on their audience characteristics, behaviour, product or service preference and perception of a brand.

2. Buyer personas

Although most consumer personas are buyer personas, this term is usually used for business-to-business personas where there may be multiple decision makers.

3. User personas

User personas aren’t relevant for all businesses. They may be used in B2B marketing when users of a product or service are different from the specifier or buyer.

4. Web design or Customer experience personas.

Personas created specifically to improve the online user experience and improve the results from sites. Ideally, they incorporate touchpoint mapping to support purchase decision making across channels. Usually based on research.

5. Primary persona

Within web design personas it’s common to define a primary marketing persona defining the ‘typical’ or ‘ideal’ customer which is the best fit for the businesses product and services.

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