10 Steps to make customers your best friend with the Customer Persona Canvas
Getting in alignment with customers today is no easy feat and insights into their behaviour are hard to come by.
While there are many best practices for product creation and development, one rule reins supreme: to view your product through the eyes of your customers.
Finding the right customer, creating a product that is perfect for them, and being able to talk to customers like a best friend is the foundation of getting a business ahead. Once companies know who their customer is, they can start creating powerful, targeted products that connect with customers and compel them to take action.
With the Customer Persona Canvas, you’ll be given the opportunity to workshop your ideal customer persona — what they look, think, feel, and best way to reach them.
What is a Customer Persona?
Think of a customer persona as your metaphorical torch. It’s a source full of information that will tell you what your customers actually need, guiding you in the right direction.
A customer persona is a detailed representation of a business’s ideal user. This semi-fictional portrait is based on past experiences with customers, or created based on market research. Unlike a target audience description that classifies a large group of people, a customer persona defines one person’s character, values, demographics, problems, and goals.
There’s quite a lot of information to add to a buyer persona canvas — we thought it would be helpful if we followed an example along each step. I’m sure you are familiar with ClassPass, a company which provides access to different fitness classes and health clubs via its flat-rate monthly subscription service. Without further ado, let’s create a Customer Persona Canvas for ClassPass!
The devil in the details
Let us take a brief look at each element of the canvas:
#1 Buyer Persona
The focus here is on understanding the archetype of our customers. This is tougher than it looks, especially when going into new markets or launching new products.
Who are our buyers? What is the archetypal background, experience and roles of our buyers?
Marketed as boutique fitness studios that often looked more like spas, ClassPass attracts affluent women, often living in large metropolitan areas. Bored by the inefficiencies of the traditional gym box, these health enthusiasts seek an alternative experience to discover and explore different new fitness workouts and various fitness studios.
#2 Goals
A customer persona attempts to understand goal-directed buying behaviour. Goals are very powerful — they are a motivating force which shape behaviour. They could be something tangible: a beautiful advertisement, a sleek web page, or a more intangible achievement: increased productivity, greater security.
What motivates your customers? What are characteristics of their personality? What professional and personal achievements are they working towards?
Highly motivated and health-conscious, ClassPass’ customers wish to adopt and maintain active lifestyles by participating in fitness and wellness classes. It provides a platform for customers to meet like-minded individuals, make new friends, and on the grander scheme of things, fulfilling the basic human need for connection.
#3 Buying Process
Now it’s time to dive deeper into customers’ purchasing behaviour. Modelling the buying cycle and customers’ journey end-to-end is important for it gives you the map you need to create the experience customers seek.
How do customers buy? What buying process do your buyers follow? What is their archetypal buyer’s journey?
During the early stage, ClassPass adopted the use of Groupon to gain traction. It provided a convenient and affordable way for users to discover and explore different fitness workouts and fitness studios, which eventually led to some purchasing a monthly membership plan.
#4 Buying Thinking
Understanding how buyers form what we call mental models, a collective merger of attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, motivations and guiding principles. Oftentimes, they are not so obvious and customers themselves struggle to articulate it; this is where third-party expertise can be handy.
What perceptions and beliefs do our buyers have? And how do these perceptions affect buying behaviour?
With ClassPass’ unlimited monthly membership, customers could pick from all kinds of different fitness classes each month and attend as many lessons as they liked, enabling them to diversify their fitness regimen. Such customisable experiences were a strong value proposition, encouraging customers to purchase a subscription as an unlimited pass was deemed “worthy” and valuable.
#5 Why Buy
Getting at the core of “why” is the ultimate test. Like a concentric circle, buyers have many defence mechanisms in place making it difficult to achieve this core deep understanding.
What is your customers’ role in the purchase process? What are his/her objections to purchasing? How do our buyers balance consequences and payoffs?
As the boutique fitness studio trend started picking up, consumers got curious and were eager to hop on the bandwagon. These boutique fitness studios that often looked more like spas than traditional gyms provided a more appealing “product/service” to ClassPass’ target customers.
#6 Initiatives
Every industry will display patterns of initiatives and strategies. The purpose here is to gain a representation of the key initiatives relevant to customers and the industry.
What are the archetypal strategies of our buyers and industry? Which programs and projects are important?
ClassPass doubles-down on the community through constant integration of social features on their app, an initiative to make it easier for users to find, connect and work out with friends. The ClassPass social experience includes the ability to search and find friends through Facebook, view friends’ upcoming and past classes, discover friends’ favourite studios and many more.
#7 Timing
Certain types of buyers, as well as industries, display specific patterns of timing. Gaining insight into this aspect of buying can lead to powerful content as well as sales interaction at the right time.
What are the seasonal patterns of our buyers? What is the normal end-to-end buying cycle?
ClassPass often see significant peaks and valleys in terms of attendance and signups based on seasonality with a big spike in January as people tend to be very committed to their new year fitness-related resolution. But it drops significantly over time as the summer months come around and consumers slowly forget about their resolutions and often prioritise spending time outside rather than indoors in a gym.
#8 Channels
The explosion of multiple channels in the new digital age makes this more important to understand than a dozen years ago. Understanding how buyers wish to travel seamlessly through channels is emerging as a competitive difference maker.
Where are our buyers socially? Where does your customer hang out online and physically? What sites or platforms are they drawn to?
Getting access to classes was convenient and made easy through the ClassPass’ web portal at first and eventually through a dedicated app on iOS then on Android. Whenever customers open the app to book a fitness class, they can find a class that matches their needs in terms of location, type of work out and quality.
#9 Influencers, stakeholders, buying team
Influencers, stakeholders and the buying team can work independently or in unison. Consider where your ideal customer goes to get information to solve his or her problems. List the sources and influences he or she uses and trusts: Favourite blogs, favourite magazines, favourite book, favourite thought leaders.
Who do they look up to? Who are internal and external influencers? What role does the buyer persona have on the buying team?
Classpass has an army of loyal subscribers that are taking to social media and blogs to preach its greatness and their love for the company, including social media influencers. With a great following, they play a pivotal role in fuelling ClassPass’ growth, convincing followers to sign up.
#10 Content & Information
The information and content needs of customers are shifting. What we seek here is not only mapping content to a buying process but understanding the meaning, usage, and sharing of content. More importantly, we seek to know which information directly affects positive buying behaviour.
What are the content customers seek, and when? How do customers obtain information? How do customers utilise and share content?
Gen Z and Millennials often made up the majority of the customer base of ClassPass. With the ever growing presence of social media, you may have chanced upon photos on Instagram ClassPass’ users post after each work out with the hashtag #Classpass. Such social media outlets become the main source of news.
Voila! Your customer persona canvas is now complete.
Concluding Thoughts
Ideally, you will work with only one customer persona in the beginning. Yet, it is important to note that as a business evolves, more customer personas may be identified. That’s perfectly okay! Sometimes your product is a good fit for several “types” of people, so you’ll just need to create a buyer persona for each.
These fictional characters are not merely a description, but rather a collection of valuable insights into customers that companies can use to gain a deeper understanding of customers, thereby offering a product based on their needs, wants and expectations. It is also highly useful in rolling out laser-focused targeting in marketing plans, creating more customised, personalised, and useful content. In turn, the company enjoys much higher conversion rates.
So there you have it: a complete guide to creating your very own customer persona canvas! Think about your customer persona(s) every time you make a decision about your business and your marketing strategy, and be rewarded with special connections formed with your customers.
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