Personas in product development

What do personas look like in product development?

Personas are more than demographics, occupation and preferences. It is also - and in product development above all - about pain points, desires, emotions and triggers.

• What are the needs of my persona?
• Where are market gaps that could be used to satisfy these needs?

If you know these characteristics of your customers and can link them to current market trends, you are on the right track and in a position to develop or refine a product in such a way that it meets the needs of customers and is demanded accordingly. The answers to these questions are in agile, data-driven personas. Depending on the persona, you can align your product strategy.

A product strategy is a roadmap for the development of a product that provides the team with all the necessary information and to-dos until market launch. It contains the benefits of the product for both customers and the company. For the development team it helps to keep track of the product, marketing and sales refer to this roadmap to communicate the benefits of the product well. For everyone, it sets the timing.

Agile personas reflect changing customer preferences in real time. They can be used to define realistic and accurate goals, define and prioritize customer needs. Persona characteristics such as emotions and desires help create a good product strategy, because you can tell from them who would use a product and what impact the product will have on customers. Accordingly, you can position the product on the market in a targeted manner and differentiate it from competitors.

Different product strategies:

Differentiation strategy: You develop a product that stands out from the competition in one or more respects, for example by:

Quality: Customers do not care about price, but they do care about quality and design. Poor product design or lack of further development leads to failure. Here, data-based agile personas are particularly important in order to always be on par with customer needs with the product: Knowing what they need, what they like, what they value is the key to successful product design.

Environmental friendliness: The trend toward environmental protection is reflected in many persona profiles today. Companies are taking advantage of this insight by gearing their products, product versions or manufacturing process to this and communicating this in a targeted manner in marketing.

Service: If the persona states that customers value service, the product as such may well be similar to that of the competition, as long as the company scores with reliable, personal and fast service. The aforementioned roadmap must therefore focus less on product design and more on good service and its communication.

Delivery: For some customers, fast delivery is the most important criterion, even if the product is otherwise no different from the competition. If the persona profile indicates that the delivery date is not a priority, this approach does not make sense, because faster delivery usually increases costs.

Price strategy: A favorable price is the main differentiator from the competition and is achieved through economies of scale. Personas are less important in this strategy.

Market segmentation strategy: The company divides the market by customer type and develops customized products for each customer type. Data-driven personas are extremely valuable for this strategy in particular.

Of course, there is no single valid product strategy and there is also never just one persona for a product, i.e., a homogeneous group of customers with exactly the same emotions, requirements, and pain points. Therefore, it is important to get a clear picture of the size and importance of the different customer groups in order to choose the right data-driven strategy. If the customer groups are large enough, it is also possible to have different strategies for different customer groups.
Which strategy brings success with which product is revealed by the personas - if they are data-driven and agile.