Developing Personas

• Members of the Forbes Agency Council provided several considerations for developing effective customer personas including distinguishing between users and buyers; don't get distracted by customer exceptions; get input from both customers and the sales team; define why personas are needed; use Facebook insights to obtain data; know your customers' pain points; treat personas as hypotheses; and create multiple personas.
• Annemarie Duran, a member of the Forbes Agency Council provides the following guidance for developing customer personas: analyze customer data and trends; research industry problems; talk to customers and potential customers; and regularly update personas.
• Effective personas should include both demographic and psychographic data. Demographic data might include "age, sex, income level, marital status, education level, (and) geographic location." Psychographic data helps to understand the values, attitudes, and aspirations of customers.

Advertising Disruption

•  Artificial intelligence (AI) allows for interactions with customers that allows for learning about that specific customer without having to rely on a persona. This personal knowledge is valuable and when successful could eliminate the need for customer personas.
• Machine learning algorithms will allow for data collection that can allow companies to create exact personas of their actual customer base.
• There is a move to create product personas instead of user personas. A product persona is the practice of describing a brand or product in terms of the qualities it would have if it were human.