One of the most important exercises in the brand strategy process is creating customer profiles. When designing your logo, identity, or marketing materials, it’s crucial to remember that we are designing for your audience. A powerful way to define that audience is by creating profiles that represent your ideal customer.
HubSpot describes it well:
“A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer based on data, interviews, and some educated guesses.”
Customer profiles help you make decisions about the look, feel, voice, and tone of your brand. When you have a clearer picture of who you’re championing, you gain a clearer understanding of the bullseye you’re trying to hit. Profiles guide the execution of your design work and messaging, and they help your employees better understand your audience when selling to new prospects or engaging in customer service.
Remember: not everyone is your customer — and that’s a good thing. You’re not the best fit for everyone, and that’s okay. You want to attract the right customers who will enjoy your product or service, and who will go on to advocate for your brand, tell their friends, and leave positive reviews.
Seth Godin puts it perfectly:
“It doesn’t do any good at all to know that you can’t please everyone but not use that knowledge to be bolder, walk lighter and do better work for those you can please.”
I find that creating two or three customer profiles is usually the most effective approach — one for your current customers, one for your ideal customers, and possibly another if you have more than one segment in your target audience. Don’t get carried away, though. Not everyone is your audience.
Once you’ve created your profiles, hang them in your office or keep them on hand. They serve as a constant reminder that you are working for your customers — who they are, what they need, and how you can reach them and solve their problems.
Age, gender, education, marital status, hobbies, brand affinity.
What problems are they facing? What compelling events made them realize they needed a solution?
What do they expect? What are they seeking in a solution?
What’s standing in their way? What prevents them from arriving at a solution?
Why do they — or why would they — love your brand?
Include a picture of what this person might look like to make the profile feel more real.
Creating customer profiles is a fun and collaborative exercise — one that should involve people from across your organization. It brings focus to your team and aligns everyone around a common goal: reaching your audience. Remember, we are designing and crafting messages based on their needs and how we can solve their problems. Profiles help everyone understand both how and for whom we are solving those problems.
Once you’ve created your profiles, I like to build a user journey — or illustrate a funnel — for each one. This helps determine the right channels, messaging, and design choices for each stage of their experience. I talk more about this in my previous blog post.
-Kyle Dolan