Personas - essential or ‘nice to have’?

It depends.

A persona that is based on lots of data and reveals what customer’s read, who their influencers on social media are, their leisure interests, the sports they enjoy, etc. are an incredibly valuable tool in understanding exactly who the customer is and how to target them.

If, on the other hand, the persona is based on minimal data (for example, a handful of interviews with existing customers) and contains very little in the way of actionable information then most companies would probably regard that as nice to have rather than essential.

Unfortunately, most personas fall into the latter category, take forever to construct and are rarely referenced.

Our Yaudience personas fit into the former category and are used by many technology companies to plan their advertising, PR and influencer campaigns. They’ve also been used to identify popular keynote speakers for events, as well as themes and topics for content writing.

We even know of a customer who staged an incredibly successful wine tasting event because our persona revealed that 8 percent of the target audience were partial to a glass of wine…or two!