Do your users influence the purchase decision or do they remain at first desire, with no more decision-making authority? How to distinguish them? In the end... who's in charge? Buyers and users: Often, different people with different motivations, expectations and objectives. If you have them well placed, it will be easier for you to mark the path to your goals.
Faced with a problem or need, we evaluate the different solutions that are presented with a single lens, depending on our urgency, motivations or concerns. Deepening the motivations of users and buyers is essential, be it for build brand stories or marketing campaigns.
To get to those ideas, we can Build archetypes more or less grounded, with a focus on use (User/Design Personas) or purchase (Buyer/Marketing Personas), which will help us keep our eyes on the final recipient of the work.
Don't confuse buyers and users, unless... the two roles end up coming together in the same person.
Buyer Personas, orbiting the Marketing planet
Buyer Personas are, ultimately, those who They make the purchase decision. Even if they are not users, they are part of the target market we want to target. As a tool, we use them to guide our campaigns, ensuring that we will speak to the right audience, in their language, on the most appropriate channels and messages.
Buyer Personas can be individuals or an entire team, they make high-level decisions and see objectives and expectations as critical factors. To build them, we will need to know (or decide) their demographic and psychographic characteristics, consumption habits, objectives and challenges, which is no small thing.
What is all that? Age, gender, location, occupation and income range, values, preferences, attitudes and brand affiliations, what brands and media they consume, on what channels, how often, what are their objectives in relation to your product or service and how you are going to solve (or better solve) the problems or frictions they currently have.
Buyer Personas are ideal for...
• Internally define our objectives of Marketing.
• Segment the marketplace the one we want to attack.
• Build the message of our value proposition.
• Open communication to new customers.
And Buyer Personas aren't going to help you if what you need is...
• Define the personality of your product.
• Decide what features you should have.
• Prioritize your development needs at different stages.
• Discover how the product will be used over time.
Design Personas, the User's constellation
If the construction of People, in marketing, focuses on WHO, a Design Persona will focus on HOW. Design Personas will help us understand the context of those who use our product or service directly and intensely, deepening their ease of use, the skills required, the learning curve, previous experiences and expectations.
Design Personas focus on micro-moments where a particular user tries to achieve a specific objective. In them, we will find all the information present in Buyer Personas, but also extra information about their behavior, such as the path they follow to achieve the objective, patterns of affinity or what stimuli affect their decision-making and how.
“Having a persona is no substitute for user research with actual users”
Chris Thelwell | Are people ruining your product?
They will be the internal reference when it comes to discussing the global vision of our product or service, reminding us that, in reality, those who use it (and not us) are its owners. They offer us a realistic and objective view of where the problems lie. Problems solved? Better reviews, more word of mouth, more sales.
Design Personas are created to...
• Define with what features must count the product or service.
• Mark use cases realistic.
• Decide how the interfacing.
• Refine the semblance of our product or service.
So they won't help us when it comes to...
• Mark recruitment strategies.
• Define our external communication.
• Create final sales materials.
How to Build Design/User Personas
They are models (conceptual representations) of what our audience is like, so we will need to research and state their objectives, desires and behavior. You'll have to go deeper into their goals, the context in which they live, their age and gender, their needs and fears.
The essentials:
— You'll need a profile picture, first and last name, age, gender, where you live, number of children, archetype, a brief biography and a personality map.
— Images related to your lifestyle.
— Personality: Introvert or extrovert? Analytical or creative? Passive or active? You can approach this point from different perspectives: Myers-Briggs, descriptions or axis diagram.
— Goals and motivations (related to your product or service).
— Create final sales materials.
To leave it nickel-plated:
— Create between 3 and 5 people.
— Pay special attention to the products in your industry that they are already using.
— Reflect the customer journey of each of your People (abandonment, rebounds, where they sleep, what moves them...).
— Highlight your differences.
— Reflect a model day on a timeline.
— Include goals that your product can help achieve, even if it's indirectly.
— Review the media they use, from social networks to websites or browsers.
— Add real comments.
— List your favorite brands, books, movies, music.
— Look for a common metric to compare the behavior of your different People.
— Ensures a consistent design.
— Use iconography to emphasize information.
— Give love to data visualization.
— And remember, behaviors, attitudes, opinions and motivations are what make our People human.
“Your target users pain points should influence your design decisions more than anything else”
Tony Ho Tran | 5 essentials for your user persona template
Deepening your Design Personas will allow you to develop materials such as...
• Requirements Document of your product or service, essential for the design team, but also for marketing, sales or development. It describes its purpose, functionality and characteristics.
• Information Architecture. By understanding the mental model of users, you can distribute information based on how they classify and navigate content.
• Style Guide. You will know what colors, what typographies, what visual universes will conquer your audience. You'll make sure what brand and style appeal to your target users.
• Content strategy. Tone of voice and style. You'll be more clear about what type of content to create and where to distribute it.
Here are some examples, in case you want to get on with it
Drew The Influencer , by Arthur Chayka.
Nerdy Nina, from CTRL Metrics.
Mailchimp People, by Justin Pervorse.
The Aviator Analyst, from Applied by Design.
Do you feel sick to yourself? Do you want to download your Design Personas and are you running out of time?
Do you have all the information but... don't want to get started with the design? You whistle at us and we help you, at Salago, of people, we know for a while.
