Build your Predictive Persona
After watching the video above, we recommend you watch this video from Visme: “How to create a user persona” which explains the different steps of creating a Predictive (or user) persona.
Building predictive personas will help you understand who you are selling this product to, their demographics, and their preferences. Develop in-depth customer profiles of your target audience as you want to build out a strong understanding of how you plan on reaching out to them. As an additional resource, this article from Hootsuite will help you understand what a target market is and how to find yours.
Transcript - Build your predictive persona
Now you know that when introducing a new innovative product or technology to the market you must go after the Early Adopters 13.5%. They are the visionaries who see the value in your product that you yourself may not see.
Early Adopters are after Technology & Performance. They are driven by the need to improve efficiency, reduce cost, increase market penetration, or raise social status, beyond what current solutions and products in the market can provide.
And due to how they use social media and engage with the community they are more likely to spread the word about your product.
They are creators and conversationalists who love to promote and support the products they are using and making their lives better.
Constantly looking for the next innovation that will make a difference, the product that very few can have, that no one knows about, and they are the first to use.
This makes them more likely to use a new product or technology before others and pay more for the product than later adopters.
Early Adopters are more likely to provide feedback about product deficiencies and even work with you to help you develop the product. Anything that makes them feel they have exclusive access.
These are all great starting points to find your early adopters, however, these early adopters are not the same for every product or technology.
For every innovative product or technology, there is a different group of early adopters. And just because a group are early adopters for one product doesn’t mean they are early adopters for another product.
That’s why you need to create your predictive persona.
The concept of a predictive persona was introduced by Laura Klein Author of Build Better Products and UX.
Developing personas is a complex process that takes time, but it’s worth the investment. Personas are helpful for creating an emotional connection with customers and understanding their needs
The goal of good, well-researched personas should be the ability to treat the constructed personas as a proxy for customers.
You take what you’ve learned from and about customers and produce something that lets you constantly check your work to make sure it matches what you’ve learned.
You interview customers, get a picture of the ideal customer in mind, then piece together several different versions if necessary!
A predictive persona is like a crystal ball for marketers - it lets you predict whether someone will become your customer. That’s an incredibly useful tool when you’re looking for new customers.
Imagine if you knew the exact factors that make it likely that a person will become and remain a happy customer.
Think about how much better that would be than guesswork based on a few personal characteristics like where they live or what time zone they’re in?
So what you do is create a predictive persona for your early adopters, and based entirely on the persona you go out and find 10 people who match it.
Make sure your personas include, in addition to basic demographic information, some behavioral information or a description of the needs and goals of the customer.
You need to make sure those match, too.
Whatever the profile, recruit 10 people who match it.
It’s easy to neglect the details of a profile when you’re eager and ready to launch your product.
But if you can’t find 10 people who match that particular persona then you’ll have a hard time finding thousands or even millions of them to be your actual customers.
Your predictive persona should reflect people you can find in the wild, since you’ll need to do that in order to acquire them as customers of your product.
If you find them, the next step is talking to them about their needs and finding out if they have the problem that your product solves.
I think every entrepreneur has had this experience where they imagine the perfect customer for their product.
The one who is just like you, and wants to solve that exact problem your product solves.
Of course, the chances are that you don’t have the perfect customer for your product.
You have a description of a completely imaginary person who you think should want to use your product.
Until you can identify the specific things that make a person want to be a customer, you don’t have an accurate predictive persona.
And that means your product and business decisions will be based on a lie.
So what do you do?
This may seem like an impossible task, but you don’t have any other option if your product doesn’t solve a problem that they need solved, they will not buy that product if you build it.
You iterate on your persona or your problem. Because you’re either wrong about what makes a person use your product, or you’re wrong about what problem your potential customers are seeking to solve.
You keep iterating and learning until your persona isn’t just descriptive of your customers, but also predictive of the type of person who will become a customer.
Use predictive personas for finding out if you really do understand exactly who your customers are, what problems they want to solve and why they would buy and use your product.
Suggested Prompts
How can you effectively gather behavioral and needs-based information to build a truly predictive persona?
What strategies can be used to continuously iterate and validate your predictive persona to ensure its accuracy?
In what ways might understanding the early adopter group’s specific motivations influence your marketing and product development approach?
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Introduction and Onboarding
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Welcome to Startup 101 - Ideation module!
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What is Launch?
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Meet the Launch team
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What to Expect
CHAPTER 1 : CUSTOMER DISCOVERY AND LEAN CANVAS
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Chapter 1: Customer Discovery and Lean Canvas
Defining Your Startup Idea
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Articulate your startup idea
Forming Your Core Team
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Team and background
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Do you need a cofounder?
Market and Competition
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Market analysis
Competitors analysis
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Competitor analysis
Build Your Lean Canvas
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The Lean Canvas
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The Lean Canvas - Capture Your Business Model in 20 Minutes - Lean Canvas
Find Your Early Adopters
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Talk To Your Customers
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Find Your Early Adopters
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Build your Predictive Persona
User Interviews
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Defining Your Value Proposition
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Finding Your Product Market Fit
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User Testing & Gathering Feedback
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Product Demo
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Marketing & PR
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Social media footprint
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CHAPTER 5: FUNDRAISING & FINANCES
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Elevator pitch
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Fundraising
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