Any business needs to know who it’s customers are. They need to know what they want, and what problems they have to solve.

Setting up a business to sell a product or service without knowing this stuff probably won’t work out well.

If you don’t know what your customer wants, how will you know if anyone is going to be interested in buying it?

Different languages

You would write a letter to your 83-year-old grandmother in a very different way than you would a Facebook post to your best friend from college. It’s a different person, different age group, different cultural references; basically, a completely different language.

Developing personas/profiles/avatars for your customers is just as important for you as it is for the copywriter who is going to write your website copy. So that’s why I have developed this form.

Knowing your customers

Successful businesses have this all sorted. They talk to their customers, understand their needs and their worries. They will have products or services that fulfil just what the customer wants. They will have feedback on what customers think about their products, then constantly fine-tune and improve their offer..

My customer persona form

The customer persona profile tool has been developed to start nailing down your customer’s outlook on life. Bare bones information, needed to start pitching to them in the right way. As a marketing exercise it’s down there as one of the basics.

Have a specific customer in mind

Fill this form in with one customer in mind. If you don’t know what newspaper they read, guess, but guess from what you know about them. You are hardly likely to know what they earn, but you may have an idea what kind of house they live in or car they drive. Make an estimate from that, or even write, “They drive a BMW Five series, top of the range.” This helps us have an idea of what matters to them.

Lots of different kinds of people probably buy your products or services, and so it’s useful to fill in a few different personas for your top three, four or five different customer types. They may be very different, but they will all share a value that makes your product special to them; that’s useful information.

Now the work begins

Please work your way through the form, perhaps making best guesses where you need to. If you’re struggling, it could show you need to be talking to your customers more. Click on the button below.