Personas: who they are and why they are useful in a Customer Centric business strategy.

What are Personas?

Personas are sketches of real people that represent the needs, behaviors, interests, and expectations of potential users of a product or service.

...but weren't they called Target...?

Personas are not Targets.
Target refers to the “group” of consumers or users targeted by a company or product, characterized by a common socio-demographic profile.
Personas are defined as representations of the defining traits of each user that include demographic information (age, gender, geographic location, income) and psychographic information (behaviors, interests, reasons for purchase, needs).

Why talk about Personas (and with Personas....)?

Talking about Personas instead of Targets marks a radical change in approach: there are no targets to hit but people to engage! (1)
When targeting heterogeneous audiences, the risk is to set up an ineffective strategy, because you do not ask about people’s real needs and the user-experience you are going to propose.
Instead, by defining Personas, we empathize with people’s expectations and needs and aim to make their experience unique and personalized.

How do you define Personas?

Many tools can be used to define Personas, and it is useful to collect and cross-reference quantitative data (such as your site analytics, social media listening data, sales statistics and in-store access) and qualitative data (such as interviews and focus groups).
Personas also are not immutable over time; rather, it is essential to continuously monitor the behavior of your users in reality in order to adapt your product or service to your Personas.

How many Personas?

How many Personas must be made? There is no exact number. Much depends on business objectives, but in general the more complex a project is, the more useful it is to imagine more than one Personas.