The first question I ask every person that asks me for product management advice is: How well do you know your customers? You would think you know who your customer is based on the product or service you sell, however, almost no one really does.
Here is a real scenario from my friend Daniel.
Daniel is a successful small business owner. He created a modern version of the school lunchbox with features that motivate and excite children to eat a balanced meal by using colored compartments sized according to the right mix of proteins, carbs, and healthy fats. His product became an Amazon sensation with revenues of over $1 million per year.
When Daniel asked me to help move the product to the next level, the first question I asked him was: How well do you know your customers? Daniel quickly answered: “Very well. Our customers are children in elementary school. Our product doesn’t discriminate against anyone, and we sell different versions based on color and compartment sizes to ensure every child’s need”.
Awesome. However, not good enough. Children in elementary school is a good answer to identify the target end user, however, there is a lot more to pay attention to. This is why studying and being familiar with the personas that interact with your product or service is so important to unlock growth.
What is a Persona?
In the context of understanding the real customer of a product or service, a persona is a fictional representation of a typical or ideal customer based on research and data.
A persona is created by identifying the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics of the target audience. This includes factors such as age, gender, occupation, interests, goals, challenges, and buying habits. By understanding these factors, you can create a list of personas that represents their ideal customers and use it to inform your marketing, sales, and product development strategies.
Personas are useful because they help you to empathize with your customers and understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. This, in turn, can help you create products and services that are tailored to your customer's needs, resulting in greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, and higher sales.
As you keep reading and learning, you will quickly realize that the study of personas, even for the simplest product or service, can become a complex exercise. I believe the better you know your personas, the best your product strategy could be.
So, how can you start building a clear view of your personas? There are many methods available out there, however, after more than 15 years of developing personas for multiple products and services, I strongly believe that the most effective way is to follow my 3-step method for developing personas.
Step 1. Who. A simple way to identify personas for a specific product or service is by answering the following question: Who interacts in ANY WAY with my product?
Step 2. How. Once you have identified who interacts in any way with your product, it is time to ask: How do they interact with my product?
Step 3. What. This step is about identifying what product features and characteristics each of the personas listed in step 1 needs. It is very important to initially focus on the NEEDS and not on the LIKES. What you need out of a product should always be a higher priority than what you like. So, the question is: What features do they need?
Let’s answer these questions using Daniel’s lunchbox example. Let’s not focus on the priority, ordering, or grouping of these personas for now.
Persona 1:
Who: Children in elementary school.
How: They are the end users. They eat from it. They need to be able to open and close the lunch box easily. They need to pull it out and store it back in a backpack.
What: They might not care about functional features. They do care about colors and images. Having fun and eating food they like is likely important.
Persona 2:
Who. Parents of the children in elementary school.
How. They do research and compare features before purchasing. They purchase the lunch box most likely without feedback from their children. They cook (or buy) the food that goes into the lunchbox. They clean it after every use using preferably a dishwasher. They store it somewhere in their kitchens once is washed.
What. Safety is very important, like materials being food-grade compliant. Lunchbox size to ensure it fits in their children's backpacks, they validate that the compartments are the right size for the children and the types of foods they eat. They need the lunchbox to open and close easily for small children's strength. They need the lunchbox to not spill food or liquids inside the children’s
As you can see, there is a big difference between Daniel’s initial answer and what we uncovered by just answering the three key questions. After this quick exercise it is clear that Daniel was neglecting a key persona, the buyer and decision maker: the parents. By focusing only on the children and not on the parents, Daniel’s lunchbox Amazon listing and packaging were lacking the key information the parents needed to make a confident purchase, and as such, he was missing sales against his competitors.
In the next issue.
The next issue will be focused on creating the final personas. We will give a name and a personality to each of the personas identified above. Also, we will provide additional details to the How and What section using a template I will provide. This template will also be available for download, for free.
You will realize how complex this exercise can be, but I will provide tools and tips to simplify it.