Persona Process

To start off.... What are Personas?

“Inbound marketing requires an understanding of what your users need, how they think, and how they behave — and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your approach”

• A persona is a fictional character, but one that is created from the facts you know about your customers.
• So while the personas themselves aren’t real people, they have the qualities of your real customers, and should feel recognisable
• Personas will help us all to understand your customers better and internalise the ideal customer we're trying to attract
• Personas are a core concept of HubSpot and Inbound Marketing, they will direct our content plans and buyer journey

Why do we create Buyer Personas?

71% of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals
have documented personas
(Source: Understanding B2B Buyers Benchmark Study, Cintell)

Personas provide us with:

• Important information about the ideal customer/ end user
• Valuable direction to help steer campaign and/ or content creation
• A method to constructively segment the customer database, based on existing, relevant properties

Pr-requisites

• A list of consumers/ end users that represent the client's ideal buyers, provided by the client. The list should have already agreed to participate in the persona interview process
• An agreed incentive for participants/ interviewees. It has been proven that more users will agree to participate in the interviews if there is an incentive. A $20 to $50 voucher is our recommended incentive.

The Persona Research Process

• Create a Persona Survey for the client.
  • Go to the relevant client folder and select New > Google Forms > From a template > Select {3 CODE} | {PROJECT} | Updated Buyer Persona Survey
  • Rename the Google Form as appropriate.
  • Make sure the questionnaire is aking the right questions. In the template, you will see that there are a range of important, yet generic, questions to ask - such as:
    • What do you do in a normal day?
    • Which social media platforms do you use?
    • Which other products/ services do you use?
  • It is essential to ask questions that are pertinent to the client's product/ service, and how it fits the requirement for the end user. Refer to the client Kick-off document to help to predetermine how end users may be segmented. You may be able to ask questions that
    
    • May be associated to custom properties
    • Are associated to different components or uses of the client's product/ service
    • Outline the key problem/ need that the client's product/ service solves

• • Once this has been created and QA'd internally with the PM, it must be signed off by the client
  • Once the questionnaire has been signed off, go the the Google Form containing the questionnaire, click on the responses tab then click on the Google Sheet Icon. This will generate a google sheet containing all of the data from the interview results.

• Create the Research Database, based on the 20+ contacts that the client has provided who have agreed to participate in the interviewing process. This will be an important way to track which of the interviewees have been contacted, when, by who, and any important notes relevant to the interviewing proccess.
  • In the client folder, select New > Google Sheets > From a template > {Client} | {Project} | Persona research tracking | working
  • Rename the google sheet as appropriate
  • Populate the sheet with the interviewee details (first & last names, phone number, email address)
• Start the interview process. For more information on how to conduct interviews click here. 

Correllate the Data 

The first step is to review the interview responses google sheet. Spend some time to go through all of the responses and outline any of the trends that stand out. At this stage, it is valuable to talk to the interviewers to determine if they noticed any particular trends from the interviewees, even some that may not have been captured in the google form.

Tips:

• Highlight and colour code where correlations are present for certain fields
• Avoid creating trends based on demographics. Focus solely on their drivers. If there are similarities in demographics after these splits have been made, use them to speak to the resulting persona
• Review verbatim comments. These can contain importand tidbits of information around what drives the user.

Once these trends have been outlined in the google sheet, create additional tabs on the responses google sheet where the responses for each of the key trends can be added.

Once these segmented groups have been created, review the data in each tab and determine of there are any other trends that shared by the responses in each group.

When presenting back to the client, we aim to create at least 3 different buyer personas. If this can't be achieved, raise this with the Project Manager.

Create the Persona Presentation Deck

In the client folder, select New > Google Slides > From a template > Select {3 CODE} | {PROJECT} | {EXPANDED} Personas | Working.

The Persona Deck is pre-poluated with examples that will provide some direction as to what needs to be completed.

Each buyer perona will need to have a profile picture that best suites them. To find this, go to Adobe Stock and find the portraits that best represent the personas. If you do not have the approriate access, ask one of the creative team to download and resize the persona images as required. 

Once the Persona Presentation Deck has been completed, QA with the Project Manager and the Marketing Lead.

Persona Presentation

For details on this client session, click here.

IMPORTANT: Note that the collected persona data is confidential. If the client requests the response data, this must be anomynised first before sending back to the client.

In this session, the client will be given an opportunity to comment and feedback on the personas that have been created. Make notes on any changes that the client has requested where appropriate.

Once the client has signed off on the Persona Presentation Deck, download a .PDF copy and email this to the client.

Load the Personas into HubSpot

In HubSpot, click on the  Settings tab > Properties.

In the Search properties field, enter Persona.

Click the Persona property that appears. An Edit property screen will appear. Click on the Add another persona. You will then be able to input the details for your first persona, including:

• Name (eg Detailed Derek)
• Description (this is the one-liner that best describes each persona from the presentation deck)
• Roles
• Goals & challenges (as outlined in the persona presentation)
• Demographics (Age, income, education & location as appropriate)
• Story (This is also from the persona presentation)
• Tick the "Automatically create smart lists for this persona" box, and save.
• Repeat this process for each of the personas.

Once the personas have been created, you can now create the Persona Allocation workflows.

• Go to Contacts > Lists
• Click on Create folder > enter Folder name 'Personas'
• Click Create list > Contact-based and ensure that Active list is selected. Name the list Persona | {Enter persona name here}.
• Select the appropriate filters that will trigger contacts to be added to this list. As mentioned above, this may be associated to known properties/ custom properties.
• Once all of the approriate lists have been created, go to Automation > Workflows.
• Click on Create folder, then create a folder named Personas.
• Create a workflow for each of the personas, with the trigger being List membership to the appropriate list previously created. 
• The following action in the workflow will be Set Property Value > Persona >  Select appropriate persona.