Personas and Journey Mapping

Last month, 20 National Governing Bodies (NGBs) embarked on the Innovation and Digital Accelerator, developed by CAST as part of Sport England’s B2022 Fund. The programme has been designed to help NGBs across England harness the power and flexibility of digital and design, to help more people from more communities access and enjoy sport — during the Birmingham 2022 Games and beyond. ‍

As part of their introduction to the programme, NGBs attended a workshop which looked at ways to understand their target audience and how to map their routes into sport.

The goal of this session was to ensure that the interventions that are designed as part of the accelerator programme are both appropriate for the audience and meet their needs at the right point in their journey into trying a new sport.

Personas

Many of the NGBs have clear audience segments who they want to address and attract to try out their sport. However, these segmentations only give us part of the story. Two 18–24 year old females from an underrepresented community within a given geographic area, for example, may have quite different interests, motivations, influences, blockers and reasons to try a new sport.

It is only through in-depth one-to-one interviews that we can build a clear picture and develop personas within the segmentation. Without these we are likely to be swayed by our own biases rather than directed by meaningful investigation and evidence.

Additionally, we should also consider the other people involved in the process. Is the NGB relying on volunteers to organise and run try-out sessions for new participants? There may be overriding traits that great coaches exhibit. We shouldn’t forget the value that outlining these could bring to the recruitment process. Not to mention how they approach and talk to new entrants into the sport.

A persona canvas can be downloaded here to help frame the conversations and map out the findings.

More detail on developing personas can be found on the Catalyst PUNS guide

Journey Mapping

Like audience segmentation, most NGBs have an understanding of new participants’ routes into their sport. These may, however, be limited to specific and well-served segments. They might not exist for the people they are targeting as part of the accelerator programme. There is, after all, a reason why these groups are underrepresented.

The purpose of journey mapping is to ensure that blockers are removed and opportunities exploited to maximise the effectiveness of what is essentially an onboarding process into a new sport. They could provide valuable insights for designing interventions, digital or otherwise.

The NGBs may be able to reuse their current processes, but with a focus on testing and interrogating at each stage to see where it might not be appropriate for their new participants.

For example, they may gain an understanding of effective local marketing channels and the type of language to use. Or blockers around access to facilities or having to pay up front for a set of 6 weekly sessions.

They may need to do a deep dive into the experience of the first taster session. What might seem to be innocuous hurdles to someone familiar with the sport could put someone off for them never to return.

Once a journey map is created and tested within a given community or geographic area, it can form a template to roll out for similar communities in other areas of the country. Alongside the localised personas of course.

A template Journey Map is available for download here.

Both these tools should be viewed as flexible frameworks to help NGBs make a start. Once filled out, they should be treated as works-in-progress. Something to continually refer to, tweak and improve.

A video of the talk can be seen here.

The slides used are available to download here.