How Creating Marketing Personas is just like Acting in Theater

I got an undergrad degree in theater. I'm frequently asked "what does acting have to do with marketing?" and the answer is EVERYTHING. Great marketing starts with understanding your CUSTOMER, inside and out, just like acting in a play involves studying and inhabiting your CHARACTER inside and out. To be a great actor means understanding a character's objectives and the obstacles which stand in her way. That's very similar to understanding a customer's "problem" and "objectives" which require a "solution".

The modern business term for this approach is called studying and defining customer "personas" which involves creating a composite character of your target customer that drives both product development and go-to-market strategy. Creating this "persona" is very similar to writing or impersonating a "character" in a play.

Here's what Sales and Marketing professionals can learn from great acting: The father of modern acting was the great Russian theater director and teacher Constantin Stanislavski, who wrote many books about acting, namely studying and embodying characters in a play. His approach to teaching acting has been boiled down to 7 key questions an actor must answer in detail in order to bring a character to life. These 7 key questions map almost perfectly to understanding your CUSTOMER in order to create a PERSONA for them in marketing and bringing that persona to life in Sales.

Below, I've taken a summary of Stanislavski's 7 keys questions about understanding your character and turned them in questions about your CUSTOMER which, when answered, will produce your customer persona and provide the basis for serving your customer either as a product designer or Sales solution specialist. These questions can be answered formally, by interviewing 10 or more representative customers, or informally, by aggregating your observations of customers through multiple conversations and sight or Zoom visits.

Just like writing or acting in a play, understanding customer personas is an act of deep empathy and understanding. Remember this is not just about the explicit goals a person has in her job, it's about the EMOTION that MOTIVATES them to do their job. Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to write the marketing SCRIPT that incorporates the Customer Persona into the story of your product in your customer's mind.

1. Who am I?

Start with the basics about the customer’s position and role, then fill in the gaps by interviewing at least 10 customers who fit your “persona” (just like a character in a play). Find out what type of person your customer is: Ask detailed questions about what they do every day at work and how they think about their work. What do they believe? How do others describe them and so on. Ask about your customer’s past and the significant events/people that influenced them and made them who they are in their job.

2. Where am I?

Where does your customer work? What kind of business is it and where is he/she physically located? Is it an open work space? Or are they shut in an office? Customers act differently in public than they do in private. People’s physical space makes a big difference in their mood and motivation. The space your customer occupies can determine how they behave at work.

3. What time is it?

How old is the customer’s business? Well established? Startup? Think about how the specific age of the company changes the customer’s actions and approach. If it’s a startup, customers have a different attitude and approach to work than in older, larger well-established companies.  

4. What do I want?

This is a customer’s primary motivation for everything they do at work. All actions are performed with the goal of getting what you want from other people at work. This is also called a customer’s objective. Like characters in a play, customers have explicit and subliminal (emotional) objectives. Understanding both your customer’s explicit and subliminal objectives is critical in fashioning a solution for them to accomplish their objectives.

5. Why do I want it?

There must be a driving force behind your customer’s objectives at work and that is their justification. We all have reasons for doing what we do and customers are no different. Do they want to achieve X% increase in production to meet company goals? Do they want a promotion? Give your customer a convincing reason to buy from you that aligns with both their both their explicit and subliminal justification.

6. How will I get what I want?

Customers use conversations and gestures to try to understand how to influence others at work to give her what she wants i.e. accomplish your objective. This is also called a Customer’s tactic. If one tactic fails, they will try a new one and see if that works.

7. What must I overcome to get what I want?

There is always something stopping a customer from achieving her objective. Usually, there is someone or something in the outside world such as a competitor impeding a customer’s advancement and/or some internal conflict at work they struggle with. Find what these obstacles are and help them overcome the obstacles with your product or service. This is also called a customer’s obstacle.

Just like writing or acting in a play, understanding customer personas is an act of deep empathy and understanding. Remember this is not just about the explicit goals a person has in her job, it's about the EMOTION that MOTIVATES them to do their job. Your job, should you decide to accept, is to write the marketing SCRIPT that incorporates the Customer Persona into the story of your product in your customer's mind.