Having customer personas is a great way to focus on your audience in a more targeted way, according to the characteristics of the audience segments. We are seeing many changes in people's behaviour, mainly due to personal factors, like fear and higher expectations, as well as induced by society, such as social distancing and stronger level of control.

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Customer personas are a great tool that each DMO should have because not only it gives a precise description of customers but it also helps the organisation to have common knowledge about their audience.

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‍How to create personas?

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If you have a clear understanding of your target markets it should be easy for you to start thinking about fictional characters that belong to each of them. But if you are not familiar with your audience or struggle to identify your target segments, there are 4 steps to take according to Buffer that could help you in the creation of personas.

1. Check your website analytics It might be the last thing that comes to your mind but checking Google Analytics of your DMO website is actually a very accurate solution to find out who are the average visitors, where do they come from, what keywords they use to find you and which content they browse on the website, which also gives you a rough estimate of their interests.
2. Involve the whole team in creating profiles The whole team means the whole team, not only your marketing colleagues. Gather them and work together in the definition of the characteristics of personas. The exercise has to be a more like a brainstorming at the beginning but with the ultimate goal to create a customer persona card.
3. Social media research Social media is a goldmine of information about your audience. Most social media platforms have an analytics section that lets you discover data about your users like age, gender, interests, etc. Gather all that information and add it to the list for the final representation of your personas.
4. Ask your audience questions Use surveys and interviews to find precise insight about your customers. Surveys are an easy way to gather data quickly if you already have a good list of customers to contact. Interviews can reveal deeper insight about goals, motivations and frustrations which help to get the picture of the persona.

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Create the persona

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When working on personas, it is important to start giving each person a name, age and provenience as well as mapping out their general interests.

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Characterise the persona

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It is also useful to create a quote for the persona that illustrates their attitude towards travel and holidays or their preference towards your destination.

Next, it is important to map out in detail what describes each persona best in six categories:

1. Demographics: where does this customer live, income, occupation, marital status, children, etc.
2. Behaviours: describe typical behaviour when planning and going on holiday
3. Attitudes: highlight attitudes towards travel as well as specific interests
4. Needs/ Challenges: describe the specific needs and challenges of the consumer
5. Goals/ Motivations: what motivates the consumer to go on holiday, what are key motivators for travel
6. How can we help?: define how the DMO could help these personas overcome their challenges along the visitor cycle, whether helping them take the travel decision or planning their trip.

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Target the persona

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Now that you have a clear picture of the persona, you can start thinking about ways to target the persona with specific content about your destination, through defined channels, maybe making use of ambassadors who can promote a specific experience to do at the destination which is perfect for the persona.

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The data gathered through this template will ultimately help you in the final representation of the persona, through the Customer Persona Card.

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