How to create a customer persona when you don’t have any customers (yet)
If you don’t have a lot (or any) customers, you might be thinking “How can I create a customer persona?, I don’t have any customers to analyze.” But you can still use this useful tool to help you drive your marketing strategy. You just have to treat it like a science experiment and create a hypothesis.
Actually, most parts of building a new business have a lot in common with a science experiment. You research. You make a hypothesis. You design a small experiment to test that hypothesis and you get the results. If your hypothesis is right…. Eureka! You go a little bigger and you do it again.
If you don’t get the results you were looking for, you start asking questions. You make small changes. And you keep learning and testing until…. Eureka!
Honestly, it might even be better if you’re starting work on your customer persona without a ton of customers. Because you can design or tweak your product or service around what you learn about your would-be customers. The more specific you can be about who your customer is, the less time it will take you to inform them about your product and get them to purchase.
The truth is, most founders start with a product or solution and then go out to find the customers. And then they start promoting that solution they get crickets. Crickets are usually caused by one of two things — 1) a great solution promoted to the wrong customers, or 2) customers who don’t desperately need that solution.
This is why your product or solution is such an important part of the Marketing Mix. If you need a Marketing Mix refresher, go here.
Why is Creating a Customer Persona Useful?
Customer personas are useful when you’re planning your marketing strategy because they help you answer the questions: “Who is your product or service for?” and “Why does it matter to them?” A detailed customer persona can make marketing easier because it helps you figure out not only who you want to talk to, but also who you don’t want to/need to talk to. Once complete, customer persona(s) can help you:
- Deeply understand the problem you are solving
- Find your brand voice
- Write better sales copy
- Understand where to find your customers online and in person
- Identify potential partners
- Figure out where your promotional dollars are best spent
- Understand and articulate the value of your product and your service as it relates to your price
- Characterize your competition
How to Get Started Creating Your Customer Persona
You can work on a customer persona on your own or with a team. Sometimes having other people there is helpful to bring energy to the brainstorming process. Remember that creating a customer persona is just one of the tools you can use to think more deeply about how you move your customers along the path from first finding out about you to telling others how much they love you. If you want to find out about other tools to help you build your marketing strategy, here’s a post for that.
Most entrepreneurs start the process of developing a customer persona by thinking along demographic dimensions. But that’s only going to scratch the surface. What you’re really trying to discover is what frustrates them (or brings them joy) and how that relates to whatever you are selling. You can imagine the answers, but you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you go out and find someone who might want your product or service and actually talk to them. The most powerful customer personas are super specific. Like characters in a novel.
In the early stages of your business you really only need one customer persona. It should be the customer who most desperately needs your solution. If you design your product or service to solve a real problem (and there’s more than one person who has the problem), you’ll be well on your way to building a sustainable business.
