Bonnie Chiurazzi

There are a few different ways to go about creating personas (which may be more closely aligned to “archetypes” or “segments” depending on the terminology your organization uses). The way you source the data largely depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. But the short answer is you can use qualitative data, quantitative data, or a mix of both. Either way, you’ll usually get the best results with primary research data - data you collect as opposed to insights you find in published research. Methodology: 1. Using qualitative data is a good choice if: 1. Your target audience is difficult to reach (e.g. HR professionals or executives of large companies) 2. You don’t have the budget or tools to conduct quantitative research 3. You already have a strong sense of who your user/buyers are and are looking for a deeper, richer understanding of these folks 4. You need to complete the research on a short timeline 2. Using quantitative data is a good choice if: 1. You want to better understand the total addressable market (TAM), which kinds of attitudes, wants and needs make each segment unique, and which segments are most aligned with your offerings 2. You want to learn more about your existing user base by leveraging behavioral data (e.g. platform usage or purchase behavior), and segment them into groups based on their behavioral patterns 3. You have the resources and time to fully develop the research methodology to accurately meet your needs Research Objectives: 1. You’ll also want to consider your primary research objectives. Are you looking for personas that will primarily impact current or future strategic initiatives? Which teams will be leveraging these personas? Will they need to be operationalized in a way that will include algorithms and formulas to track their behavior? 1. Whether quantitative or qualitative, personas that are primarily based on attitudes, wants, and needs tend to be more future-focused because they highlight unmet needs and areas of opportunity. If your goal is to grow your user base or create new, innovative products, this is a good place to start. 2. Personas that are rooted in current behavior help optimize for the present and shorter term strategies. For example, if you’re creating presonas to learn more about your most engaged users, or users of a particular product, this could be a good place to start. Protips: 1. Bonnie’s (Director of Market Insights) Pro tip: Prioritize the jobs to be done with your personas. If it only does one thing well, what should that thing be and who will leverage it the most? 2. Patti’s (Head of Consumer PMM) Pro tip: Get the most out of your personas by engaging all potential stakeholders before you finalize your research plan. 3. Sophia’s (Product Marketing Lead) Pro tip 3: Use what you have! Get scrappy and connect with whichever teams have the best access to your target audience (e.g. sales, customer service, data science, UX, market research, PMM, etc.). Take initiative to get in touch with customers, work with teams that have dedicated research resources (like UX and market research). 4. (For more, check out our answer to the question about persona framework!)

1. Persona frameworks are unique to the organizations and teams who use them. But there are a few core elements that will add some structural integrity to your personas. 1. Context and Market - How do you define the market that this persona is pulled from? Do you need to be able to size the perona’s incidence in the marketplace? 2. Name - Choose a name that is memorable and conveys whatever it is that makes this persona unique and/or valuable. Some folks like to give their persona a name like “Steve” or maybe “Steller Steve.” This is more of a stylistic thing, but I prefer more descriptive names to help stakeholders remember the most important traits of the segment. Also, make sure you pick a name you’re comfortable saying over and over in meetings! 3. Value - Identify how you will assign value to each persona. Is it an attitude they have? A behavior they exhibit? An action they take? 4. Who - Who are they (demographics, job title, hobbies, home life, etc.)? 5. What - What are they trying to accomplish in your marketplace and why? 6. Where - Where do they currently go to meet their needs? How does your brand show up compared to competitors? 7. When - What triggers them to action within your marketplace? 8. Why - Why do they have these specific needs in the marketplace? What is it that makes them unique? Presumably, this a big part of the reason you decided to create the persona, so dedicate extra time to this. 9. Pain points - What isn’t working for them? What could be better? 10. Their journey - Put it all together. What triggers them to action? What’s their desired outcome? What actually happens? 2. Sophia’s Pro Tip: Do the work to align on semantics early on. Align on a definition of a “persona” and what will be included in the profile. Make sure to revisit how your organization has used personas in the past and leverage existing frameworks and information. If you deviate from the existing frameworks or if you’re adding a new persona while others are still being leverage, make sure you’re ready to speak to the value your new methodology will add. 3. Bonnie’s pro tip: Map out your persona profile before you conduct your research. Then map your questionnaire or discussion to the profile to ensure you’re asking all the right questions to completely fill out the profile. 4. Patti’s pro tip: Check your personas for unconscious bias and make sure to include a diverse set of voice in the research that leads up to persona development.

There are so many best practices here! We’ll name the ones most top-of-mind, but please know this is not an exhaustive list. It seems simple, in theory, to conduct a research interview. It’s just asking questions, right? But moderators spend years learning and perfecting their craft. 1. Screening 1. Lean into your champions, not your haters. Find respondents who have a real need in the space and who don’t already have negative feelings towards your brand. These people will give you the feedback you need to differentiate yourself in the space. 2. Be sure to listen to a diverse set of voices when you conduct research. Ensure a good mix of age, race/ethnicity, gender, etc. 2. Create a safe space, no right or wrong answers. I like to say, “The best way to help me out today is by giving your open and honest opinion.” 3. Ask questions in order of least specific to most specific and save any concepts or ideas to evaluate for the end of the interview or survey. That way you won’t bias the respondent up front with your ideas. 4. Ask questions that don’t have a right or wrong answer. For example, don't ask “Which is the best HR platform?” because there could be an objective right or wrong answer. Instead, ask, “Which is your favorite HR platform and why?” because then you’re asking for a response based on their personal experience rather than what they think the right answer is. Anchor questions to experiences, attitudes, wants, and needs. If questions are based to factual responses, the respondent will focus on being “right” more than being honest. 5. Similarly, don’t ask respondents what they want you to build for them. That’s your job. Instead, ask them what’s going well and what could be better with their experience in the marketplace. Listen for pain points that your organization could act on. 6. Seems obvious, but don’t word questions in a really biased way, e.g. “How much do you love this product?” or “Which of the ideas is your favorite?” Instead try, “How interested are you in using this product? Why, why not?” 7. Listen. It’s tempting to give way too much context or correct respondents when you feel like they don’t understand an idea fully. But instead of jumping in to correct, see if you can instead ask them more about their perspective. 8. Bonnie’s pro tip: Go watch really good interviewers get their subjects to open up and hone in on a core source of truth. Listen to when they speak (and don’t speak). Pay attention to how they ask follow-up questions. Note their body language. Watch how the interviewee responds to different cues. Oprah is truly one of the best. Re-watch some of her greatest interviews and pay close attention. I imagine there might be a point where analyzing X number of Oprah interviews is the equivalent of a RIVA certification (I said what I said). 9. Sophia’s pro tip: Using “Why?” as your go-to probe (aka follow-up question) will start to feel like an interrogation after a while. Try to mix it up with probes like, “Tell me more about that,” “Keep going,” “Can you give me an example,” etc. 10. Patti’s pro tip: Be empathetic. It’s not enough to say there are no right or wrong answers. You must truly conduct the interview with an open mind and be curious to learn about the respondent’s perspective. You’ll know you’ve made a connection if they start sharing not just their opinions, but their experiences and emotions too.

Before we answer this one, here’s a little context about market research at Glassdoor. Our market research team is called “Market Insights” and it sits on the PMM team. Market Insights projects almost always have a strong PMM lead. 1. Before product built, PMM/Market Insights takes it; once built, UX takes it. There are some exceptions, but the reason for this criteria is that market research is more in tune with the attitudes, wants, and needs of the total audience, which helps us identify opportunities for growth. UX is especially helpful when you’re looking for opportunities to deepen engagement with specific products and experiences that already exist. 2. When UX and PMM work together, they can paint a clearer picture of who the target audience is and how they will experience your product. Some best practices that have worked well for us as we collaborate with our UX colleagues: 1. Meeting regularly to review quarterly research agendas and recent insights 2. Inviting each other to report share-outs 3. Including each other in insights-driven workshops 3. Bonnie’s pro tip: Map out your organization’s product development lifecycle and highlight key areas for research. Then determine which research team has the expertise and resources to tackle that phase of research and how they can package it up for the perfect handoff when it’s time to tag in the other team. 4. Sophia’s pro tip: As you’re considering which team should lead the research, consider which team is best positioned to level up the product offering and activate the insights gleaned from the research.

First of all, *hugs*. I've worked on both the vendor and client sides of research, so I've had the opportunity to work with many different teams with varying levels of interest in market research. When I'm working with a team that isn't "bought-in" on the value of market research, it's usually due to one of the following reasons: 1. They're in "start-up" mode and not creating space within their processes to leverage market research insights 2. They haven't made it a priority to upskill their team on how and when to use market research insights 3. They're focused on short-term growth and improvements over long-term investments and innovation Much like market research, empathizing with your target audience is the first step to solving this problem. If a team says something like "Customers don't know what they want," or "We don't have time to take a step back," consider it an invitation to talk about what's working well in their process and what could be better. Learn what's working really well for them and where there are opportunities in their process. See if you can identify a problem they want to solve and make market research the solution. For me, I usually have luck leveraging the forward-leaning strategic value of market research in the product development lifecycle in these kinds of situations. The best products stem from exposing a pain point in the market and developing an innovative solution. It's a lot more efficient to do the research and discover the pain points than it is to A/B test and hope for the best. Good luck! 

In our experience, market research is generally better suited toward future-focused strategic decisions than behavioral data (e.g. where can we expand our product offerings and what problems should we be solving?). Behavioral data can usually offer a clearer view into how to improve experiences and deepen engagement with existing products (e.g. after they do X, Y is a natural next step so let's send them a notification to nudge them in that direction). You can even link your survey data to behavioral data to get even more benefits. The three of us just completed a huge consumer segmentation analysis of our total addressable market. Now we're seeking to activate our typing tool on our site survey and link it to behavioral data so we can see exactly how each segment behaves on our site. This will give us the advantage of the forward-leaning insights from the segmentation as well as the current behavioral patterns of each segment today so we can learn how to deepen engagement now and expand usage in the future.