Customer Personas

Inherent to Customer Discovery is articulating your assumptions around who your customer will be and who your early adopter will be.

It will be helpful to develop a customer persona.

A customer persona (sometimes called a buyer persona) is a semi-fictional archetype that represents the key traits of a large segment of your audience.

A customer persona gives you insight into what your prospective customers are thinking and doing as they weigh potential options that address the problem they want to solve.

To be effective, personas need to be based on data-driven research, rather than opinions and assumptions.

Your first draft will be based on assumptions. However, your final version will be based on the data you’ve collected from customer research and interviews.

How to Create a Customer Persona
There are four areas to include:

1. Who

2. What?
Think Customer Pains and Gains on your Value Proposition Canvas

3. Why?

4. How?

This is an exercise where you zoom in on your target segment, articulate your assumptions about your customers, and then validate or invalidate your assumptions. It is okay to occasionally go outside your target zone for learning, but don’t try to boil the ocean. Focus, learn, and pivot if necessary.

The key is to focus on things that are relevant to YOUR business and customer.

For example, for the Macho Nacho Massage business, it would be important to make assumptions about how the target customer spends his time. What does he do in his free time? On the weekends? In the evenings? How does he relax? Etc.

Customer Persona Examples
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Customer Persona Templates
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