Toolkit: Guides

Creating Personas

Elements of an Effective Persona

1. Persona Category Name
2. Fictional Name
3. Employment Status/Major Responsibilities
4. Demographics
5. Goals/Aspirations
6. Physical, Social and Technological Environment
7. Quote or Statement That Sums Up What Matters to Persona
8. Image/Picture Representing Category
9. Barriers/Objections
10. Preferred Marketing and Media Channels
11. Theme, Positioning Statement or Offer

Steps to Creating Personas

1. Identify the question/problem you’re trying to solve and define persona categories you’d like to focus on.
   • Who is our audience?
   • What do we offer them?
   • What is our service personality?
   • How will we communicate to them with relevance?
   • How do we visually express this message with relevance?
2. Build Your Persona
   • Identify existing data. 
   • Identify additional data not currently available. 
   • Determine methods (Survey, Focus Group) for gathering additional data. 
3. Develop Your Persona
   • Compile and define your personas utilizing audience data.
   • Map audience journeys through customer life cycle and define content strategies.
   • Ensure personas are visible, actionable, shareable and always evolving. Share with relevant internal/external stakeholders to ensure adoption. 
4. Test Your Personas
   • Utilize A/B testing and other tactics to test your personas to determine if guidelines are accurate or needs to be adjusted.
   • Campaign results will evolve and strengthen personas.
5. Adapt Your Persona
   • Adapt personas to everchanging data and campaign feedback.