Personas Made Even Better Via Online Qual
Personas are a terrific way for a broad team to have a “cheat sheet” to remind themselves of the important aspects of the target consumer. Today’s in depth online qualitative tools can help create personas, making it easier for teams to ponder “What would Susie think about this?”
Many of the newer digital techniques including online synchronous and asynchronous one on ones, discussion boards and journaling offer the opportunity to do in depth insight work that is perfect for gaining both the depth and breadth of knowledge necessary to create accurate and helpful personas. Creating personas requires qualitative research work that gets at habits, thoughts, attitudes, feelings etc. It is a bit of a treasure hunt to find the characteristics that define a set of people in a way that is meaningful and relevant to the marketing challenge of the client. Spending five days with each member of a (potential) set of consumers via digital research often yields more and richer information than simply spending two hours in person as a guest in their world. This depth and breadth allows the QRC to create more meaningful personas than ever before.
What is a persona? A persona is a hypothetical person that represents what is meaningful and relevant about a set of people. It is the ultimate “typical” person in the group. Often I will create personas for most or all of segments of a client’s business, both demographic and psychographic segments.
Why do it? Personas are a terrific way for a broad team to have a “cheat sheet” for clients to remind themselves of the important aspects of a segment or a target. It is especially helpful when products are being aimed specifically at one group of consumers because it helps with consistency and makes marketing and sales decisions easier. “What would Susie think about this?” is an easier question to ponder than “what would moms who care about the nutrition and have a tight budget and live in rural areas think about this?”
What does it look like? Instead of a written report, each persona segment is depicted graphically, often in a three to five page template. This is short enough to be taped to the wall above a desk or blown up on poster board, but long enough to capture the key insights. When there are multiple personas for a client, I typically create a template so as to ensure the contrasts are clear.
A picture is a huge help with advertising development, new product development and more!
Adam Rossow says:
August 24th, 2011 at 10:38 am
Great post Amy. At iModerate, we have been using personas for some time in our reporting. When used appropriately, personas accomplish all the things Amy mentions above. But one of the coolest things that we have seen about personas is how sticky they are with our clients.They really serve to bring the insights to life, and make them digestable and relateable. To that end, we see the personas live on with clients long after the data books and the topline qual is a distant memory. For a great example of the effectiveness of personas check out this case study… http://www.imoderate.com/cms_images/file_242.pdf