5 Steps to Creating a Client Persona

A persona is a fictional character that represents your ideal client or clients. By creating accurate client personas with their unique goals and pain points, you gain a better understanding of their needs and can serve them relevant content.

There are a number of steps you can follow as you create and build out personas for your financial advisor practice:

Five steps to create a persona

1. Evaluate your current book of business, identifying the top clients you want to replicate.
2. Determine what they have in common. This should include a set of characteristics, such as age, profession, lifestyle, mindset, etc.
3. Detail their demographic and psychographic (mindset) characteristics, including:
   • Age, gender, life stage, profession, family status
   • Background
   • Goals and values
   • Pain points
   • Motivations
   • Other details that further define your ideal client
4. Based on the characteristics you’ve identified, name each persona, such as “Bob the Small Business Owner,” or “Sandra the Soon-to-be-Retired.” These will help you understand and appreciate their distinctions when you craft marketing tactics and strategies
5. Write a story for each persona

Putting it all together

Here’s an example of a completed persona to help you envision the final outcome:

Bob is a business owner and a family man. He has teenage children and worries about paying for college and implementing a succession plan for his business so that he can retire when he turns 65. Bob enjoys a healthy work-life balance, and makes time to travel with his wife as often as possible. He wants to maintain this lifestyle in retirement.

Taking Action

Familiarize your team members with your target persona, and reference it whenever you’re creating marketing materials and messaging.

Ask yourself whether each video or newsletter will resonate with your persona and how your messaging will help him achieve his goals.

Feel free to create multiple target personas. Just ensure that you know which one you’re speaking to when creating marketing materials and communicating with them, tailoring each one accordingly.

Questions and Consultations

If you have questions or would like to schedule a one-on-one consultation, or if you’d like to subscribe and receive email alerts when new articles become available, contact LPL Marketing Consulting at (800) 877-7210, ext. 6700 or email Marketing Consulting.

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Sarah provides custom marketing and social media consultations for LPL Finanical advisors and investment programs. In this role, she consults with and supports clients in effectively marketing their business in today's increasingly competitive environment. View full bio.