Know and profile your customer - Personnas, Empathy Map and the Eneagram system

1. Introduction: Psycographics Vs Demographics

Psychographics describes customers; values, opinions, lifestyle… 

Think of psychographics as the kind of data a psychologist or anthropologist would use to profile someone, as opposed to the demographic data that a census surveyor wants to collect… Psychographics are generally expressed as– activities, interests, opinions (AIO), and its customer research that blends demographics and psychology to give a more penetrating understanding of customer behavior. 

It analyzes the values, beliefs, and underlying motivations of target groups so that you can tailor your products and services to each group… 

According to Anthony K. Tjan; customer research tends to be demographically-biased, and it’s time to go a little ‘psycho’ on customers– psychographics, that is… 

While there’s no standard psychographic profile, we can borrow some ideas from psychology: A psychographics profile should tell us about how a person interacts with the world, e.g., extrovert or introvert, analytical or emotional, what they value most– security, family, environment… 

Psychographics offer an ability to understand current and potential customers in terms of the beliefs and values that drive their purchasing behavior… 

It’s been said demographics help you understand who buys your product or service, while psychographics helps you understand why they buy. 

Another way to put it is that demographics are things that can be observed from the outside, such as; age, race… while psychographics are internal attributes or attitudes… 

According to Eric A Mann; in simplest of terms, psychographics helps you to identify your perfect customers within the pool of potential customers… perfect customers are the ones responsible for driving the bottom line – knowing who they are and why they’re your customers helps you improve your business… 

According to Drew Palmer; the more you know about the customer target, the better job you can do of building and delivering your message!

source: link1.

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2. Personnas and Empathy Maps

To dig deep into your customer you should apply the Personna e Empathy Map tools advocated in Design Thinking.

There are many ways to identify the needs of users, such as interviewing users, discussions with business stakeholders, usability testing, focus groups ,etc. 

However one technique that has grown in popularity and acceptance is the use of personas: the development of archetypal users to direct the vision and design of a product or service.

What are personas?

Empathy Map1

Personas are archetypal users that represent the needs of larger groups of users, in terms of their goals and personal characteristics. They act as ‘stand-ins’ for real users and help guide decisions about functionality and design.

Empathy Map2

Personas identify the user motivations, expectations and goals responsible for driving behaviour, and bring users to life by giving them names, personalities and often a photo.

Although personas are fictitious, they are based on knowledge of real users. Some form of user research is conducted before they are written to ensure they represent end users rather than the opinion of the person writing the personas (read more here).

Empathy Map, a tool for Customer Profiling was developed by XPlane (more tools available here).

3. The Eneagram System 

The Eneagram system is (in my opinion) the most comprehensive system for understanding our underlying motivations:

The Enneagram is a powerful system for understanding Human Nature. 

Like other personality type systems, the Enneagram describes nine different groups of behavours and characteristic tendencies of people. However, the Enneagram goes deeper, describing the unconscous motivations underlying our behaviour. 

These motivations describe why we think, feel, and act the way we do (read more here).

Eneagranma e Inteligência Emocional

Cada tipo caracteriza-se  por três "estados":
dominante - estado fundamental,
regressão - estado de desintegração,
exaltação - estado de integração.

Building a strong, compelling Value Proposition

“Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries calls startups “human institutions designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

With that apt description, he captures some of the challenges early-stage companies face:

Besides inadequate understanding of markets, competitors and customer preferences, startups often struggle to define what value their innovation brings to the market.

 Acknowledging and addressing this challenge is a critical first step in helping startups commercialize successfully; after all, how can you sell a product or service if you can’t articulate its value?

 It is an important tool in ultimately capturing your first customer. The point is to make use of that tool to engage potential customers and remove some of the uncertainty under which startups operate.

A value proposition is a short statement that clearly communicates the benefits that your potential client gets by using your product, service or idea. It "boils down" all the complexity of your sales pitch into something that your client can easily grasp and remember.

 It needs to be very specific: Simply describing the features or capabilities of your offer is not enough. Your value proposition must focus closely on what your customer really wants and values. 

Your customer wants to solve problems, to improve on existing solutions, to have a better life, build a better business or do more, better, faster.

Step 1: Know your customer: 

Who is he or she? 

What does s/he do and need? 

What problems does s/he need to solve? 

What improvements does s/he look for? 

What does s/he value? 

Tip: If you don't know, ask!

It's easy to try to second guess what your customers want. And very easy to get it wrong. So do some market research: This could be a simple matter of asking customers directly, or organizing a focus group or surveys. 'Market research' is not just for external customers, it works for other 'markets' too: Depending on your product or idea, your 'market' could be employees, colleagues, or even your spouse.

Step 2: Know your product, service or idea (more below). 

From your customer view point: 

How does the product, service or idea solve the problem or offer improvement? 

What value and hard results does it offer the customer? 

Tip: Include numbers and percentages.

To grab your customer's attention even faster in this financially-oriented world, your value proposition should also speak percentages and numbers: How much will your customer gain, save or improve? How much more efficient will he or she become? How much safer, smarter, faster, brighter will the solution be? And so on.

Step 3: Know your competitors. Keep on thinking from the perspective of your customer, and ask: How does your product or idea create more value than competing ones?

Step 4: Distill the customer-oriented proposition. The final step is to pull it all together and answer, in 2 or 3 sentence:

 "Why should I buy this specific product or idea?" Try writing from the customer viewpoint by completing the following, (and don't forget to include the numbers and percentages that matter!):

 "I want to buy this product or idea because it will...";

"The things I value most about the offer are...";

"It is better than competing products or ideas because..."

Step 5: Pull it all together: Now, turn around your customers 'answer' from step 4 into a value proposition statement. The final step is writing the value proposition statement. It should address what market you are targeting, what product or service you are delivering, how you are delivering it and why.

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Step 2 - Identifying customer benefits:

Brainstorming the benefits you believe your product or service offers to customers is as simple as making a list.

The leap for many entrepreneurs is to be able to distinguish between what excites them about the technology and what value the product actually brings to the customer.

Keep in mind that your customer and the end-user of your product or service might not be the same. Differentiating between what your customer and the end-user perceive as value can help you communicate your value proposition more effectively.

Broadly speaking, all businesses deliver value in one or a combination of three categories of differentiation: 1) cost, 2) technology and 3) service. 

These bases for differentiation include many value delivery mechanisms such as warranty, performance and accessibility. 

Identifying which of these categories your product benefits fall into allows you to effectively differentiate yourself from your competition.

You can map your company’s value proposition on a chart with three axes for each of the bases of differentiation. 

You can then identify where your strengths are.

Sources: link1, link2