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Customer Archetypes and Buyer Personas: A fundamental step for your startup

When you find an opportunity to develop a software, i.e. after you have finally worked on your idea long enough and decided to take the next step to make it happen, one of the essential steps of the way is to know the consumer you are addressing to. So you can delineate them to such an extent that you develop your software specially adapted to their needs. How do you do this? For starters, making the character of your ideal client will help you. As if it were a role for a story or a movie, you will create a representation, give them a name, preferences, profile, and in general provide life to the role. Why is this done? We'll explain it in more detail here and show you how to do it. First of all, you only need to know that these tools are known as Customer Archetypes and Buyer Persona

A more complete understanding of the Customer Archetypes

The consumer archetype is a narrative of the character you described as your ideal customer, focusing on their behavior and their relationship with a particular product.

You can base this practice on an existing product, which is your competition, but you can also make this practice based on the concept of your new product.

The important thing is to have the information about how your ideal customer behaves. their wants, their needs, what they lack, and how they feel when they are interacting with a person.

The Customer Archetype is a tool that is designed to give you in-depth knowledge of the final consumer behavior, and the future interaction that they could have with the solution that you will offer.

This process makes it easier to meet their expectations.

Why a Customer Archetype?

It serves well to predict their behavior, their desires, and their concerns. And then, use that information as a competitive advantage to satisfy them with the product you are going to develop.

Some experts believe that an archetype even contains information about the product and the future interaction of the consumer with the  you are going to develop.That is why you should lead with questions such as What are the general characteristics of the consumer? What is the goal of using the product? What is the consumer focused on when they use the product?

Importance of the Product Development Process

We agree with the premise of creating a customer archetype. We think that the archetype refers to the behavior of the consumer, and their possible interaction with the product.

In fact, the archetype has greater emphasis and is even considered a new way of developing the demographic factor of the traditional market segments that have been known for years.

Archetype vs. Persona

The branding Person, Buyer Person or just persona, is a fictitious character. This character has specific qualities and characteristics.

These characters are created to represent one or several types of customers who will use or acquire the product you are going to develop.

Based on research on who the buyers or consumers are going to be, these fictitious characters are created, which will help you get to know your audience better. This practice is not only done at an early stage of development. For any marketing campaign, effort or improvement that you are going to make throughout the life cycle of your product, it is recommended that you perform this practice. If you know better who you are going to sell to, you can offer it better.

This practice can be fun because you must give your character a name, a status, a type of thought, a knowledge, and as many details as you can. With the help of the archetype, which is the information of his behavior, you can then feel one with the client. Discovering what he likes, what he needs, where you can approach him, among other data.

Completing the Buyer Persona

By answering questions and filling out these charts, you can create the character of youri deal client. Let's get started!

1. Demographic

·       Name

·       Gender

·       Age

·       Income

·       Housing type

·       Education Level

·       Marital Status

·       Children

·       Occupation

·       Hobbies

2. Geographic

·       Where are they located?

·       Where do they live? Urban, suburban, rural?

3. Psychographic

This point refers to the values, emotions, perceptions, beliefs and even interests of that character we are developing.

·       Attitudes

·       Value Behaviors

·       Life Philosophies

·       Habits

To understand better this point, which, from our perspective is the key to the creation of the Buyer Persona, we present a valuable tool called the Empathy Map below.

The Empathy Map

An empathy map is a tool that can give that unique touch to your Buyer Persona. With it, you can achieve a more profound vision of the character of your ideal client. It's a holistic practice, but it can help you understand much.

In this map, all the character’s psychographic is constructed from 6 questions:

What does the customer segment think and feel? What does the customer segment see? What does the customer segment say? What does the customer segment hear? What causes customer segment pain? What causes the customer segment gain?

All of the answers to these questions  with the product you are planning to develop would look more or less like this.

Now it is time for the Customer Archetype

As we said, archetypes are more related to the behavior and experience or interaction that can have that fictitious character you already created, with the idea of your  product. That's why, when it comes to archetypes, more is said about personality than about the person himself.

There are some pre-existing archetypes that have features and behaviors well defined by others before. Some could fit perfectly with your ideal audience, but if you do not feel identified with any of them, you can create another one that suits you best.

For the moment, and for practical purposes, we will present some of the most common and known archetypes so that you have an idea of how this tool works or the information it should contain.

Personality Archetypes

The Innocent

Their profile is traditional, very hopeful and dreamy. They also have a touch of romantic or tender.

Usually, this target is comprised of women and children.

The people of this archetype are pure. They are rooted in the theme of moral values, love the concept of childhood either because they are living it or because they have nostalgia for it. They are optimistic, & committed to simplicity and purity.

They look for happiness, tranquility and being at ease with themselves. If they feel that they lost the trustworthiness or innocence, this can take them out of their comfort zone.

The Hero

This profile is just the opposite. They are competitive, they can be a fighter, a warrior. They like to win, feel control of their process, they are optimistic, and even tend to want to solve social problems or situations they notice around them.

They like challenges.

The Explorer

This archetype of personality is adventurous. They love extreme or different emotions, out of the ordinary. They are individualistic and can pioneer many things.

They like updates and constant innovation. They are original and are always looking for new methods and ways to live or to solve their daily problems.

They can be a very demanding target.

They fear to fall into monotony or conformism.

They seek independence and autonomy, (this is what you should offer them).

The Artist

They are creative, technological and very self-taught. They want to do things for themselves.

They are creators, designers, innovators, and dreamers. They tend to be talented.

They desire to create a world of imagination and emotion, and when they manage to fulfill their ideas, they feel satisfied.

Their fear is the loss of inspiration or mediocrity.

With them, your creativity must be multiplied by a thousand.

The Wise Man

These person are intellectual. They are the advisors, experts, philosophers, and mentors to others. They like to research and analysis. The scientific touch or tone attracts them.

They are stimulated by the problems to be solved and the big questions, because they feel the need to discover the truth with research and knowledge.

They want to achieve independence through knowledge. They are clients of industries such as information, high education, technology, and science.

The Visionary

This is a born leader. Also known as a magician, this target is made up of mentors, consultants, and people with technical knowledge. They are pragmatic and conventional.

They have big dreams, are charismatic and turn problems into significant opportunities for change. They want to serve as inspiration for others, demonstrating that dreams come true.

They have an inspirational touch.

Choose any of these, and give a personality to your Buyer Persona. This way, you will connect better with your final consumer, and all the details of your software will be more precise for you and the rest of your team.

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