A comprehensive guide to develop your Customer Persona and zoom in on your market From SpikeLab.org Source:

Your customers are human beings… …with problems, needs, goals, habits, who live and work in certain environments. Source:

What is Persona development? A process to represent this information in a usable format A process to help you identify your FIRST CUSTOMER so you can build with direction and purpose Source:

What is a persona? Any of these five groups 1.decision maker - whoever decides to buy your product 2.economic buyer - the one with the money that will cut you the check 3.recommenders - which can be the decision maker herself or other peers 4.influencers - generally known figures in the industry your customer is in 5.end users - those that actually will use the product day in day out Each persona has different functions, goals, and orientations Source:

Give me an example OK: Facebook. Facebook has customers and users A customer is someone who pays you A user just uses your product. Any product hoping to make money from advertising falls in this bucket with the people using the product being the users and the marketers being the customers. In a case like this you have at minimum two personas and failing to be clear about it will kill your business. Furthermore once you have the two persons with stated needs & goals it should also be more obvious how the two are potentially in conflict, a problem you'll have to deal with. Source:

Your Persona is still a hypothesis to test The most important thing you'll have to test for is obviously their needs and goals, which must be aligned with your product offering, but you may also find that the demographics you put down were incorrect or that the person doesn't engage in the behaviors you thought they would. Some of them you will have to specifically test for, others will just be side-effects of more important experiments, but it's crucial that you treat what you wrote as a living document that you need to update based on the outcomes of your experiments. Source:

Luxr's Persona Development Framework Give it a face Demographics Behaviors Goals and needs The goal is to have a visual and contextual (to the problem you solve) representation of your customer, an idea of what that person may look like, what things they engage with and what they are looking for (again in the context of the market you're in). Source:

How to create your persona 1.Dump and sort: Generate ideas on your own to get them out of your head with a Sharpie, Post-it notes, and table space – THEN discuss with team Post-it Notes function like idea containers…they can be added, removed and easily shifted.” Sticky notes are also the perfect size for one concise idea. 2.Give it a face: name, face, place, bubble speech. After you’ve done this you should feel like you know her 3.Facts: additional information to help identify your customer, e.g., demographics (age, income, geography, marital status, etc.) 4.Behaviors: Use action verbs to describe behaviors you could observe 5.Needs and goals: what does your persona want to accomplish? what does she need? Do NOT be too generic here – everyone wants more money and more time Source:

Work on a wall Source: