Before you get to the “customer persona” stage, you have to do research. If you haven’t done research on who your customers are, stop reading and start doing some research! Your research should cover as much information as possible, specifically focusing on customer beliefs and their pain points. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

Eight out of ten businesses fail. This is a discouraging statistic for entrepreneurs. How can you be in the other 20% of businesses that succeed? The most critically differentiating factor is whether or not you are in touch with your customers. You must build your marketplace for your customer and you can only do this by having extensive research on your prospective customer base. What do you need to know to ensure you have quality information?

• What are your customers’ beliefs? Who are they psychologically?
• Ask detailed persona questions like, “What is your job role?” (3)
• What do they like and not like about your product or service?

There are many more aspects of research that will be important in developing a customer persona. It is important to consider who you already have as customers, if applicable, and also seek out feedback from your team. Once you have your customer research, you need to organize your audience to ensure you can develop the strongest marketing campaigns. One resource is Hubspot, where you can access
free templates to organize your audience segmentation. Identifying and organizing your customer persona research will provide you with a foundation for success as you develop your marketplace.