User Persona Template: Marketing to a Mobile Audience
This is part 1/5 in the Buzinga crash course Mobile App Marketing: How To Get 100,000 Downloads In A Month.
Part 2: 9 Steps To Building A Must Have Pre-Launch App Landing Page
Part 3: How To Generate Buzz Before Launch
Part 4: Customer Acquisition: How To Reel In Your First 5,000 Users
Part 5: How To Engage And Retain Your Current And Future Users
Most entrepreneurs and startups fall flat on their faces when developing mobile applications.
And the underlying reason for their failure is that they’re not absolutely set on who it’s for.
Sure, they build a visually stunning app with a great purpose, but because they lack a vision for their ideal user, they don’t know how to build the ‘perfect solution’.
As a result the app is built for a mixed audience which dilutes the value they aimed to deliver.
Just as this article is written for a particular reader, your app needs to be built for a particular user.
By finding your perfect user we’re able to tailor a journey with their objective in mind.
This creates an unmatched mobile experience that integrates with their natural behaviour and reduces the need for cognitive thought – which tires out your mind and makes for an exhausting experience.
In other words, we’re designing software around them, not trying to bend their habits around our solution.
Now, it may seem like your target isn’t broad enough to be commercially viable, however our aim is to cultivate a large group of raving fans.
This crowd will become your lead-marketing-engine who promote your app to the broader community.
Besides, there are 1 BILLION smartphones in the world! In many cases you only need 0.0005 % of these people to use your app in order to prove viability.
What we’re about to do is create a User Persona to jump start your mobile app marketing.
USER PERSONA TEMPLATE
Get access to your fill-in-the-blanks user persona template and get crystal clear on who your app is for!
Let’s get to work…
What are user personas?
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ‘Perfect User’.
They’re based on real data about real users and their behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, goals/motivations, and pain points.
Basically, your app solves a problem, and your User Persona is an interpretation of the person who best benefits from your application.
How Are User Personas Created?
A user persona is created through research, surveys, and interviews of your perfect user. That includes a mix of users – both “good-fits” and “bad-fits” for your app to make sure you know who to target, and who NOT to target.
Look for people in your network (and outside of your network) to get a good range of opinion.
You’ll collect data that is both qualitative and quantitative to paint a picture of who your ideal user is, what they value, and how your mobile application fits into their routines.
See also: 10 Most Popular Mobile App Analytics Platforms
Creating Your User Persona
Step 1: Creating your Persona’s Identity
A) Give your persona a name that you feel represents your persona’s character. What’s the first name that comes to mind when you think of this person? Anthony, Susan, Jimbo… Also fill in some basic details about their background/hobbies, education, etc.
B) Fill in their demographic details
- Gender
- Age range
- House-hold Income (helps to identify monetisation strategy)
- Residential (homeowner) and where?
- Children?
- Marital status
C) Words that represent your persona. Charismatic, quirky, energetic, etc.
Step 2: What are your Persona’s motivations?
A) Primary goal for using your application. Secondary goal (if there is one).
B) Challenges, pain points, disturbances.
C) How your mobile app solves these challenges, eases their pains and removes their disturbances.
Step 3: Give your Persona some life
A) What are some real quotes in this person’s life (take during interviews). E.g. I just wish I had an app that would __fill in the blank__ for me.
B) What would be their biggest reason for not downloading your app?
Step 4: Your marketing message
A) Put together a Unique Selling Proposition. This is a one-liner that describes in simple terms the underpinning value of your mobile solution.
B) Elevator pitch: A 15 second description of the benefit that your app delivers for your user persona.
Step 5: How do they find you?
How do they normally find out about new apps? Recommendations, App Store search, PPC ads, etc.
See also: 5 Customer Acquisition Strategies To Reel In Your First 5,000 App Users
How Do You Use This Information?
So you’ve done your research and found your user persona…now what?
You need to be able to integrate your new-found understanding of your user persona’s motivations, characteristics, mood, etc. into the user-experience design of your application.
That means you need to effectively communicate your persona to your team:
- Business analyst
- User experience designer
- Graphic designer
- Programmers
- Testers
- Marketers
In some cases you’ll wear the hat for a few of these roles, but in the case that you’re working with an app development company you’ll want to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
It will also help you form the message you use for reaching out and attracting your perfect users.
The first step (and this is important) is to format the information into an easy-to-read document to share it with your team.
Download our ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ template for creating your own mobile app user personas. This should do the trick!
Basically, it’s as easy as that.
The most important thing is to make sure that you’re not blindly guessing. Remember, we’re solving problems for real people so you want to ensure that you’re working with real data.
Here’s that user persona template one more time –> CLICK HERE.
We’re inspired by questions, so if there’s anything else you would like to know, related to this subject or not, please post your questions in the comments section below.
Ready to put your user persona into action? Put together a powerful marketing plan with our template below…
Continue the crash course…
Part 2: 9 Steps To Building A Must Have Pre-Launch App Landing Page
Part 3: How To Generate Buzz Before Launch
Part 4: Customer Acquisition: How To Reel In Your First 5,000 Users
Part 5: How To Engage And Retain Your Current And Future Users
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