Getting To Know Your Businesses’ Customers

Customer personas can help you make your copy more persuasive.

Today, we will explain everything you need to know about them, including what they are, why they work, and how to create them.

What is a Customer Persona?

A customer persona is a fictional character that represents your target demographic.

You can think of customer personas as archetypes that convey the most important information about your dream customers.

What is the Purpose of Customer Personas?

We humans have evolved to live in tribes organized around extended families that were intermarried with each other.

Surviving in such an environment requires an ability to empathize with individuals, which is why we developed it.

However, there was no need to emphasize large, abstract groups of people, so we still struggle with it.

This cognitive limitation can be a big problem for entrepreneurs – writing persuasive copy requires empathy, but your target audience is a large, abstract group of people that your brain cannot conceptualize.

And that’s where customer personas come in: instead of attempting to empathize with your target audience, you create a fictional character to represent it.

Then, you write all the copy for that particular customer segment with this fictional character in mind!

Does Your Business Need Customer Personas?

Customer personas aren’t a necessity – you can grow your business without them.

However, they can help you write better copy, which means higher conversion rates, more sales, and more revenue.

We understand this whole idea might sound weird if you have never encountered it.

However, some of the best copywriters in the world swear by this approach, so it would be unwise to dismiss it without giving it a shot!

Which Customer Segment Should You Start With?

First, analyze your sales funnel conversion data to see what kind of people are the most likely to convert into leads and paying customers.

Then, look at the sales data to see which customers bring in a disproportionate revenue.

Finally, check your customer support, cancellation, and refund request data to see which customers are the least likely to submit customer support tickets, cancel their subscriptions, and ask for refunds.

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that:

“For many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.”

Once you analyze your business data, you might discover a pattern that follows this principle, with a minority of your customers bringing in most of your revenue.

In addition to that, you may also realize that the most lucrative customer segment is the least fussy, as measured by the customer support, cancellation, and refund request data.

In that case, the easiest way to grow your business is to zero in on this demographic to attract more people like that. We recommend creating a customer persona for this segment first!

The #1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make When It Comes to Customer Personas

The most common mistake entrepreneurs make regarding customer personas is treating them as a creative writing exercise.

While customer personas are fictional, they should be based on data, not your imagination.

Quantitative data revolves around numbers and is measurable, while qualitative data revolves around language and is open to interpretation.

It’s important to collect, analyze, and use both types of data because they both have value and can help you make better business decisions.

What doesn’t have value is you making things up. Ask yourself where you get it from whenever you want to add something to your customer persona. If you cannot point to a specific piece of data, you probably shouldn’t include it.

That will help you keep your biases in check, avoid falling for inaccurate stereotypes, and create customer personas that closely resemble the median person in that demographic.

Set Up a System for Storing and Organizing Customer Research Data

You don’t want your customer research data scattered across your email inbox, social media DMs, and Google Doc notes. Instead, you should set up a system for storing and organizing it.

Some entrepreneurs store everything in text documents, others use spreadsheets, and others build databases with apps like Notion. The exact approach doesn’t matter; what’s important is that you store data in a way that makes it easy to access, browse, and retrieve specific information.

Start by Researching Your Existing Customers

You already have a list of existing customers in your most lucrative customer segment. So why not start by researching them?

Review All Communications Between Them and Your Company

This means social media posts that mention you, social media DMs, emails, customer support tickets, refund requests, and so on.

Send Out a Customer Survey via Email

Send out a customer survey via email where customers can evaluate your product or service by clicking a frowny face emoji, a neutral face emoji, or a smiley face emoji.

The purpose of this survey is to identify the customers who are willing to provide feedback.

Reach Out to Customers Who Responded to Your Survey

Wait to see who responds to your survey, and then reach out to those customers via email.

Tell them you would like to learn more about their experience with your product or service and see if they would be willing to jump on a 30-minute Zoom call with you.

Ask Your Most Important Question via Email if They are Not Willing to Have a Zoom Call

If they respond to your reach-out email but are unwilling to have a call, send them your most important question and tell them that you’d appreciate it if they could help you understand that particular issue better. Then, thank them for their feedback and leave it as is.

Analyze Their Social Media Profiles

Since you know the names and last names of your most lucrative customers, you should be able to find their social media profiles.

That can help you learn more about where they are in their lives, the main challenges they are struggling with, and what language they use to describe those challenges. You might also discover various idiosyncrasies that are common in your target demographic.

We understand that analyzing people’s social media profiles might seem weird. However, if you aren’t feeling like a creepy online stalker, you probably aren’t doing enough customer research!

Expand the Scope of Your Customer Research

Once you are done learning about your existing customers, expand the scope of your customer research to include potential customers that belong to the same lucrative demographic.

Consume the Same Content That They are Consuming

It’s probably safe to say that we are all being heavily influenced by the content we consume, regardless of whether we are consciously aware of that.

This means you can learn a lot about the headspace your potential customers are in by consuming the same content.

That includes:

• Following the same influencers
• Reading the same blogs
• Subscribing to the same newsletters 
• Listening to the same podcasts
• Watching the same YouTube and TikTok channels 

There’s also something to be said about reading popular books in your target demographic, but that is less important than keeping up with the online content.

Join Online Communities in Which They are Participating

Another great way to learn more about potential customers is to join the online communities they dominate.

That can mean:

• Subreddits
• Online forums
• Facebook groups
• Discord servers
• Membership websites

Promoting one’s products and services is typically frowned upon in online communities like the ones mentioned above, so it’s best to refrain from doing that. Otherwise, you might get kicked out.

Instead, you want to observe the conversations happening there, occasionally contribute to the discussion if you have something valuable to say, and ask questions to help you better understand where these people are coming from.

See if You Can Talk to Them One-On-One

If you become a regular in those online communities, you will probably make some connections with individuals who belong to your target demographic.

See if you can talk to them one-on-one in DMs or via Zoom. Suppose you have an informal personal connection with someone. In that case, you will likely get more candid answers from them than from a customer who only knows you within the context of a business relationship.

So don’t hesitate to ask your online acquaintances about their experiences with the problem that your product or service addresses and the nuances you may not understand if you don’t belong to that demographic.

Don’t try to sell them your product or service. However, if they ask about it, offer it to them for free so that you can get their feedback!

Talk to Them in Real Life

Finally, while interacting with potential customers online can teach you a lot, you also want to find ways to talk to them in real life.

Figure out where they congregate offline, go there, and start making connections. Meetups, seminars, and industry conferences are great for this.

Talking to people face-to-face will enable you to pick up subtle details based on their appearance, body language, demeanor, etc.

You will also get to see how your potential customers interact with each other, which can provide valuable insights into their social dynamics.

Again, don’t try to sell anyone your product or service; just observe, ask questions, and listen!

Uncover More Insights With Text Analytics Software

Text analytics apps use a machine learning technique called text analysis to extract actionable business insights from textual data.

That includes:

• Identifying the most common words, terms, and phrases
• Tracking the overall sentiment over time
• Summarizing the current overall sentiment

This software can enable you to uncover insights that would not have been available to you otherwise because it can analyze textual data in quantities that would not be possible to analyze manually.

For example, you cannot manually analyze an entire online forum, but you can do it with a text analytics app. The same can be said about social media hashtags, subreddits, YouTube comments, and TikTok comments.

There’s a ton of valuable information buried in all that data. Text analytics software can help you unearth it!

Select a Customer Persona Template

Once you are done with customer research, the next step is to choose a customer persona template.

There are a lot of them available for free on:

• Canva
• Visme
• Freepik

Select a template that is the best match for the customer persona that you want to create.

Use AI to Turn Your Research Into a Customer Persona

Take all the data from your customer research database and create an anonymized version of it.

This anonymized version should include all the information present in the original data except for people’s names, last names, and other identifying details.

Then, upload this data to a large language model of your choice, such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

Ask the large language model to create a customer persona designed to represent the median person in your target demographic based on the customer research data you provided.

Instruct it to format this customer persona to make it easy for you to fill out your chosen customer persona template.

For example, if you ask the large language model to create a persona that includes:

• Name
• Age
• Occupation
• Employer
• Family status
• Place of residence
• Personality traits
• Character type
• Motivations
• Goals
• Frustrations

…plus a short, humanizing description of that persona, a quote by it, and marketing channels through which it can be reached, you can easily fill out the template below.

Now, what was the point of all that customer research if AI can create customer personas for you in a matter of seconds?

You need to know something about large language models: they tend to make things up and confidently state them as facts. Computer scientists call this phenomenon “hallucinations”. This means that you cannot blindly trust AI output.

Fortunately, hallucinations are only a problem if you cannot verify the accuracy of what the LLM is saying due to your lack of knowledge.

If you skipped customer research and went straight to generating customer personas with AI, you would have no way of knowing if those personas are accurate.

However, now that you have done your homework, you can immediately spot if something about your AI-generated customer persona is way off.

Moreover, because you have a customer research database, you can check each trait of your customer persona against the data you collected to ensure that it represents a real pattern.

For example, if AI creates a customer persona that loves Taylor Swift, but Taylor Swift has not come up in your research at all, it’s best to remove that trait because it’s not based on data.

Getting an accurate customer persona might take some tweaking, but making adjustments is simple – you can just tell the large language what changes it should make!

See if This Customer Persona Helps You Write More Persuasive Copy

Once you have your customer persona, fill out the template, print it out, and keep it handy.

We recommend doing a three-month experiment: every time you need to write a piece of copy, do it with your customer persona in mind.

For example, let’s say your target audience is user interface designers, and AI created a customer persona, Martha Jay (pictured above), to represent it.

Whenever you need to write copy for an ad, an email, an email series, a landing page, or a sales page, don’t try to persuade “users interface designers”; try to persuade Martha. Why should she respond to your call to action?

If Martha accurately represents the median user interface designer, focusing on her should help you make your copy more persuasive.

After three months, compare the “before Martha” and “after Martha” conversion rates to see if she was helpful.

If your conversion rates remain stagnant or decrease, stop using this customer persona and see if you can create a more accurate one.

Also, if you tried several different personas for the same customer segment but your conversion rates haven’t increased, it’s possible that this approach to copywriting simply doesn’t resonate with you.

In that case, feel free to drop this whole idea. As we already explained, customer personas aren’t a necessity – you can grow your business without them.

Continue learning about copywriting and experimenting with different approaches. Eventually, you’ll discover something that works for you!

Want to Learn How to Write Copy That CONVERTS?

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