Last week I posted a little about using personas as a tool for marketing your professional service firm. I mentioned that I first ran into personas in the software development world. Today I thought I would share a lesson that took me a little while to learn back then.
One thing I remember from working with personas as a software developer and I see again in marketing is that it is important not to make up your personas.
Personas are not a creative writing exercise. A persona should be created from attributes and behaviors that you observe during your research.
Personas, similar to marketing or business plans, are one of those tools that work on the paradox that we can be more creative and free when we create boundaries for ourselves.
Personas help us create the boundaries of who we are creating content for. We want to base these boundaries on research of actual users. When we “make them up” we are creating fake boundaries. So rather than having limits that help us, we end up rationalizing and moving the boundaries.
You can usually tell if you are making things up when you start making decisions based upon your (and colleagues) opinions, rather than observations. If you are having discussions like “yes, I think that would appeal to someone in that situation” you may need to check yourself.
A well developed persona should help you have discussions like “well Betty Buyer has goals of xyz and we know that in the step 2 of her buying process she does this, so we should create an eBook outlining the top 5 things she needs to be aware of in that situation”.
I’m not suggesting that you will never change or update your personas. Just make sure you make changes based on observation, not on a whim.
