This Short Exercise Will Change the Way You See Your Customers Forever!

If you were asked to describe your customer, what would you say?

True Story: Once I met with a car dealership who said, “My customer is anyone who has a driver’s license.” And a hair salon owner who said, “Our customer is anyone who has hair.” Deep down you know you don’t have a shot at everyone who has a driver’s license or has hair.

As marketing consultants, this is the first question we ask our clients. And we dig deep.

Your Customer Is a Person, Not a Demographic Group

Defining your customer or developing your customer’s persona (and you may have more than one) is the critical first step in developing your marketing plan.

Once you do this exercise it will change the way you think about everything. Which is why it’s a good idea to involve several people in your company, especially those who deal with customers.

Simple Steps To Developing Your Customer’s Persona

Are you ready to know your customer as a person? It’s not that hard and it’s a fun exercise.
The attached downloadable Persona Development tool will help.

Here’s what you do:

1. Set aside a one hour meeting.
2. Invite people in your business who deal with customers into the room. You might even want to invite customers.
3. Bring up the tool and ask them to help you fill in the blanks. (Ever play Mad Libs? It’s kind of like that.)
4. Give the persona an actual name. Do not skip this step. Once you name them, they become real and you’ll ask yourself questions like, “Would Susan like this? Is this something Susan would care about?”

This will be a fun, eye opening exercise that will give you an actual finished product: A written customer persona that will change the way you think about everything.

How to Use Your Personas

Pin up the finished persona by everyone’s desk, hang it on the bathroom stalls, in the break room, and put it in your marketing plan. It’s that important. Your personas will remind you how to talk to your customer, guide you in developing content that’s important to them and help you write e-newsletters and blog posts they’ll care about. It will even help your customer service people relate better to the person at the other end of the line. Overtime you can gather more data about your personas as they fill out forms, answer questions and communicate back with you.

Ready to get started? Download the Persona Development tool today and you’ll never think about your customer the same way again.

Drop us a line and let us know how it worked for you!