1. Ideal Customer Personas
What they are – why they matter – how to create them – how to use them

2. What is a persona and why is it important?
An ideal customer persona is a representation of your perfect customer. They are a starting point to help us understand who we should be targeting and how we communicate with them. Personas allow us to personalize and target our marketing efforts. They become the basis for how we reach out to the market and who we talk to. It allows us to anchor and focus everything we do. Depending on your business, you could have multiple personas, however the key is to start small and evolve over time. In addition to your ideal customer, you can also develop negative personas, which highlights people you do not want to target as they are not suitable for your business.

3. How do you create a persona?
To create an accurate customer persona, you must have a strategic and balanced approach. This includes:
Market research
Interviews with customers and prospects
Mapping to existing customer groups
Speak to your sales team
The key is that they must be data driven, objective, tested and refined over time. You cannot make assumptions as they are such a foundational aspect of your business.

4. How do you use a persona?
Once you have built your persona, you create tailored content and develop a specific lead journey based upon their attributes. All of your content should aim to resonate with your persona(s) as we are trying to personalize their experience as closely as possible. Always think, would my persona find this message or this piece of content useful?
When you combine your persona with the relevant customer lifecycle stage, you create highly targeted and aligned content – the right message to the right person in the right format at the right time. This allows consistency in multi-channel journeys.

5. Persona Name: Johnny Management
Background & Demographics Gender: Male Age: 30 – 45 Job Title: Manager, General Manager, Director Education: Graduate + Family: Married with young kids Income: $150 - $200K Location: Works in the CBD
Watering Holes
What do they read? Management books, self help articles, newspaper
Where do they get their information? Internet, The Economist, credible sources.
Why would he not do the Program?
Getting time off work for the course.
Financial outlay.
How do we explain our company?
Training provider and consulting company. Delivering high performance teams through development of leadership and culture, strategy and decision making.
Primary Goals
Ambitious, wants to progress in career and life and be a better leader.
He wants to grow his knowledge base and is passionate about learning.
Identifiers
Demeanour: Thoughtful, considered, likes education, research and learning, articulate, willing to participate.
Communication Preference: or face to face
Hooks
These courses will take your career to the next level
You will become an effective leader
Your team will be highly engaged
Primary Challenges
Climbing the ‘pointy end’ of the ladder
Developing high end executive level skills/polish

6. Johnny Management’s Story
Johnny Management is a real go getter. He has risen through the professional ranks to achieve a level of success that exceeds his age. He works in middle to upper management of a well established firm, is passionate about his work and sees it as an extension of himself. He reads a lot with the goal of bettering himself, in particular management books and articles that will further his professional understanding and career. He is ambitious, well connected and seeks out opportunities to develop himself. He takes a great deal of satisfaction out of doing a good job and being well respected by his team, peers and leadership. Our company will be able to help Johnny Management achieve his goals as developing his leadership is fundamental to progressing through the management ranks. The ability to understand and lead any situations in any environment will give him the tools to take his career to the next level. It is likely he has done extensive corporate training and professional development before, so communicating our difference is important. That is, organisational success depends on engagement. It is a framework that can be applied quickly, easily and effectively to any situation that arises in the corporate arena.

7. In summary…
An ideal customer persona is a representation of your perfect customer
Personas allow us to personalise and target our marketing efforts
Always start with one and refer back to it
Depending on your business, you could have multiple personas
You can also develop negative personas.

8. Blank Templates

9. Persona Name: Insert Here
Background & Demographics Gender: x Age: x Job Title: x Education: x Family: x Income: x Location: x
Watering Holes
What do they read? x
Where do they get their information? x
Why would he not do the Program? x
How do we explain our company? x
Primary Goals x
Identifiers
Demeanour: x
Communication Preference: x
Hooks x
Primary Challenges x

10. Persona Name’s Story
Insert persona story. Examples include: What is this person like? How do they live their life? What do they care about? What are their hopes, dreams and fear? What is their buying scenario? How can our company help this person?

11. twoshape.marketing