So you’ve drawn up kick-ass customer personas. Now what?
PICK ONE!
Picking a customer segment to focus your efforts on is called “targeting”. It’s a process of aligning an organization around the goal of blowing the socks off a set of customers that all share a set of characteristics.
Here are some words of wisdom from one of my marketing professors that show how this can be done incorrectly:
“I can’t tell you how many times how many times people walk up to me cold and say, Mark, Mark, check out our awesome customer segmentation. Look at these vivid vibrant personas! Then, when I ask which one they’re going to target they say … well ‘all of them of course!’. ” – Mark Ritson, Branding Legend
The entire point of customer personals is to help you understand what it is that will absolutely delight one group. The same product, prices, channels, and messages will not resonate with the others. The entire exercise is wasted if you attempt to satisfy everyone.