Personas

However, internal discussions and decisions often centre on the company's own reasons, wishes and problems. Almost everyone knows how important it is to view and develop their company from the perspective of the target group, but only a few act accordingly.

With this tidbit of knowledge, we would like to give you a little help along the way to make it easier for you to put on your ‘target group’ glasses. After all, target groups are not a marketing toy, but should be at the centre of strategic corporate decisions.

A small piece of evidence: the flop rates of innovations are up to 95%. One reason that should not be underestimated is inadequate market research and insufficient analysis of the needs of the target group. A study by iai Bochum shows that only 38% of the companies surveyed include the customer as a source of inspiration in the product innovation process. This means that a lot of time, money and nerves are wasted.

Today we would like to introduce you to personas, a tool for defining your own target group. A persona is a fictitious, imaginary representative of your own target group that has individual wishes, dreams and goals. The description of the persona is based on quantitative and qualitative data that has already been collected about the target group in advance. The aim of designing a persona in the following step is to represent a typical person from the target group - to make a target group more tangible.

A persona is assigned a range of data and information. We start with personal data (e.g. name, picture). We call our persona Nele to illustrate this.

This is followed by socio-demographic data (e.g. age, marital status, occupation, income, place of residence). Nele is 32, lives with her fiancé and their one-year-old son Bruno in a suburb of Darmstadt. Currently on parental leave, she is otherwise employed as a qualified sports scientist in a fitness centre just 5 kilometres from her home. Due to her parental leave, Nele and her fiancé have a monthly net household income of 3,500 euros.

Above all, it is also important to add psychographic data to describe the persona (e.g. hobbies, desires, values). Nele, for example, loves to go jogging and cycling in her free time. Since her son Bruno was born, she also likes to meet up with other mums for a coffee in Darmstadt city centre or at an adventure farm that is just around the corner from her. Before they had a child together, Nele and her boyfriend fulfilled their dream of travelling around Europe in their own converted van.

The persona should be rounded off with technographic data (e.g. technical equipment, media use). It should be noted that Nele owns an iPhone 10 XR and primarily uses Instagram to get new inspiration. She uses WhatsApp to stay in touch with her family and friends. She follows the news via the Tagesschau app, which she has installed on her mobile phone.

Use people in your circle of acquaintances who belong to the target group to inspire you to describe the persona. A short meeting or phone call can help you to better empathise with the target group and gain valuable information about the focused group.

Of course, the above description is only a small part of the creation of a persona. Once you have created a detailed description of your target group representative, you can expand it flexibly with the help of creative methods. We would like to share one of these with you here: The ‘What's in Your Bag’ method can be used to create a collage of the contents of your persona's bag. Typical features here could be the car keys (especially mention the make of the car), cosmetics, a notebook and so on.

‘What's in your bag’ method to help you define a persona

The creation of a persona serves to develop empathy for your own target group and should make it easier to put yourself in the shoes of your focussed customer group. The elaborations can be used for brainstorming in the conception of your online presence or your marketing activities, among other things. Suddenly, completely new perspectives emerge that can make all the difference in communication later on. Visitors will recognise themselves in the marketing or think ‘It's as if they know me...’

You might even print out the personas and hang them above your workstation. And if your thoughts are once again taken up too much by internal ideas, measures and goals, ask yourself the question: What would Nele do?