How to create an ideal customer persona that’s actually useful for technical businesses

Understanding your ideal customer is crucial for any business, but it's especially important for technical businesses that often cater to very niche markets. A well-defined customer persona can guide your marketing efforts, product development, and sales strategies.

Here's how to create a customer persona that's truly helpful for your technical business…

What is an ideal customer persona?

An ideal customer persona is a really deep dive into the people you really want to sell to - the ones who are going to be profitable as well as energising to work with. It's a detailed profile that helps you understand your customers' needs, pain points, and motivations. 

This might seem like all the stuff you instinctively ‘know’ as a business owner. But, by writing your ideal customer persona down and getting clarity on what really makes them tick, you can tailor your marketing and sales efforts to resonate with your ideal customer. 

Why is it important for technical businesses to have an ideal customer persona?

Having an ideal customer persona for a technical business can provide several benefits, for example… 

• You can create marketing that directly addresses the needs and interests of your ideal customer.
• By understanding your customers' pain points, you can develop products that solve their problems.
• You can effectively brief other people in your team to write content that aligns with your marketing efforts and close deals more effectively.
• A clear ideal customer persona can help you make informed decisions about your business, from product pricing to marketing channels.

Do I need to carry out lots of market research to create an ideal customer persona?

The short answer is probably not. When you’re running a small business (particularly one you’ve built from the ground up) and you speak to your customers on a regular basis, nobody is ever going to understand your ideal customer as well as you do. So why would you pay someone to carry out expensive market research that’s probably going to tell you everything you already know? 

There may come a point later down the road - when you’re looking to expand into a new market for example - where market research is necessary. But, when you know your audience and market, it’s far more efficient and cost-effective, to begin with what you know and fill in the gaps by testing, measuring and refining any assumptions you make as you go along. You may be familiar with “Lean” - this is the same philosophy.

Steps to create a useful ideal customer persona for your technical business…

1. Define your persona: Give them a name and a job title. Are they someone you’ve worked with previously or an existing customer? Are they a mish-mash of a couple of clients you’ve found energising and profitable to work with? Or are they completely made up? If they’re someone you’ve worked with before, imagine a clone of them who’s never heard of you.
2. Create a detailed profile: leave off irrelevant demographic information as this can easily distract from the useful information. Instead, look at their attitudes and values, what challenges they might have in the context of what you do, what beliefs they have that aren't correct, and what questions they ask you time and time again. Download my free ideal customer persona checklist for more guidance on this. 
3. Test and refine: While creating your detailed profile, it might become clear that there are some things you just don’t know about your ideal customer - and that's ok! Once you’ve identified these areas of uncertainty, you can then talk to prospective and existing customers to help fill in the gaps. 

Remember, your ideal customer persona is never set in stone. It should evolve alongside the business and should be reviewed every 90 days to make sure it's as up-to-date as possible. Because when you know your ideal customer, you can create a more targeted and effective marketing and sales strategy.