How Moz is building personas with lean principles, keeping them relevant and authentic, and using them to create a shared understanding and empathy for our customers and community.

1. Personas at Moz:
What, How, and Why
June 2014
Karen Semyan, director of product planning and strategy
6/26/2014
1

3. 3
What you’re going to hear about today:
• One (Moz’s) approach to building personas
• Designing for adoption and relevance
• How we’re using personas today
• Q&A

4. First, a bit about Moz…
Who we are: Subscription-based inbound marketing analytics
Mission: Help people do better marketing
~21k customers ~300K community ~130 employees

5. Now…you 
Name?
Interests
and why
here?
Experience
with
personas?

6. Picture one day in your organization, when…

11. When we all have a deeper shared
understanding of our target customers, this all
becomes much easier … and more fun and
rewarding.
That’s where personas can help.

12. First, a quick review…
Persona:
An archetype* description of an imaginary but
very plausible user that personifies key traits –
especially their behaviors, attributes, and goals.
*Oh, and what it’s not: one actual customer, a generic customer, or a customer segment.
Inspired: How to Create Products Customer Love, pg. 106

13. Why personas? They help us to….

14. Personas help us to….
1. Agree on prioritization

15. Personas help us to….
1. Agree on prioritization
2. Distinguish customer’s needs from your own

16. Personas help us to….
1. Agree on prioritization
2. Distinguish customer’s needs from your own
3. Deeper understanding of user needs and how to solve for
each

17. Personas help us to….
1. Agree on prioritization
2. Distinguish customer’s needs from your own
3. Deeper understanding of user needs and how to solve for
each
4. Understand both target markets and non-target markets

18. Personas help us to….
1. Agree on prioritization
2. Distinguish customer’s needs from your own
3. Deeper understanding of user needs and how to solve for
each
4. Understand both target markets and non-target markets
5. Rally teams around a common vision

19. Personas enable us to….
1. Agree on prioritization
2. Distinguish customer’s needs from your own
3. Deeper understanding of user needs and how to solve for
each
4. Understand both target markets and non-target markets
5. Rally teams around a common vision
Describe to the company who the product is for, how they
will use it, and why they will care.

20. Moz’s Approach to
Building Personas

21. Goals for Moz personas
Current and relevant:
Create a new set of personas that account for our growing customer base, evolving
business strategy, new markets, and expanding product line.
Adaptive and usable, adopted across teams:
Build functional, clear personas that become a shared tool and language for talking
about the customer across teams.
Foster learning:
Take a journey together that allows us to learn, share buy-in, and have better
outcomes!

22. The basic process
1. Build prototype personas using lean principles
– Outcome: Draft, usable personas
2. Validate with data, iterate, and design
– Outcome: Personas validated, revised
3. Share and foster adoption
-- Outcome: Richer knowledge of our customers by all Mozzers!

23. The team
Inclusion, not exhaustion
• Some classic feature team techniques
• Core team:
– Product/UX-dense
– All customer-focused teams
represented
– Engineering critical
– Customer expertise/SMEs
– Interested!
• Reviewers: Core team + execs + managers
• Sponsor: Chief product officer

24. Part 1: Build prototype personas

25. Part 1: What do we already know?
Name & Basic Info Behaviors
Needs & GoalsProfile / Demographic
Information
Using information gathered from:
- User interviews
- Conversation at conferences
- Emails
- Community Members
- All the folk knowledge!

26. Part 1: What do we already know?
Name & Basic Info Behaviors
Needs & GoalsProfile / Demographic
Information
Thank you, Lean UX!

27. Teams for three different products
Notes became sketches became drafts

28. Leader Steve (Analytics)
Agency founder
PAIN POINTS / NEEDS BEHAVIORS
DEMOGRAPHICS
Needs:
-- A single tool
-- Justify inbound effort
-- Good reporting
-- Educate in all inbound channels
-- Participate in all channels
-- Actual value right away
-- Pain points: too many tools, diff vendors
Values:
-- Dreamer/creator
-- Independence
-- Empowering others
Details:
More buyer (Notes – can’t read??)
Could be in: Agency
3-20: trenches; 21-XX: More buy decision
-- entry point or decision, but not both
-- something about delegated decision
25-34 (older: male; younger: balance)
Education: all
-- High-school prodigy
-- College drop-out
-- College/network
Connects/forwards
Agile: try everything
Figures out value prop/niche/clients
Savvy > ongoing
Less savvy > projects are seasonal
Expert in one channel
Answers email at 2 a.m.
Bootstrapped
Takes risks, fixes things
Empowers others
Defined similar personas separately
for each site/product
~12 sessions with notes/feedback ongoing
Multiple rounds of review, editing, and
refinement

29. SME Evangelist Steve
Agency founder
“quote”
Goals
Motivations and values: Innovation + new ideas, and moving the
industry forward; knowledge sharing; efficiency; spreading the word;
staying connected; disruptive technologies/insights
Needs: Automation, more time to dig deep and think creatively;
reports that allow him to analyze quickly; high-quality results and
effective tools for teammates who are also creative and self-motivated
Abilities, skills, and knowledge
Marketing domain knowledge: Expert
Technical knowledge: Advanced to expert
Behaviors:. Steve is a respected thought leader and SME in his
industry, is highly collaborative, and shares information via his blog
and networking. He speaks at conferences to generate leads for the
agency and to build his own network. Steve’s passionate about his
work, and digs deep into analyses whenever he can (but not as much
as he’d like). He’s a hacker at heart, a tool-a-holic, and a risk taker, and
loves playing with new and novel approaches to crunching data and
metrics. For his team, he’s focused on empowering, finding efficient
processes, and figuring out the value prop or niche for a
service/tool/solution.
Personal details
Defining characteristics are charisma and deep domain knowledge
Education could be any level
Overview
• Analytics + OSE: secondary
• Local: secondary
• Data: NA
Job/role: SEO turned founder of a medium-
sized agency
Could also be found in mid-size to large
agency, perhaps mid-size to large in-house
brand
Purchase influence: user, influencer, buyer
Activities: 3-5, chiefly work-related; TBD from
customer interviews and/or industry survey
e.g., researches new directions and solutions
for getting unique data for clients
More roles like this: strategic senior leader of
many stripes (VP/director of XYZ); senior
architect; senior consultant; visionary/thought
leader
Data sources and sources for assumptions:
Created a consistent format
for sketch documents
Source for attributes: The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas

30. Identify cross-over

31. Moz
Local
Moz
Data
Moz
Analytics
31
All-Business Joe
Biz dev
Engineer Oliver
Developer
Technical Sage
Sabine
Sr. technical architect
Grey-Hat Frank
SEO
Data-Driven Dimitri
Inbound marketer/SEO
Storyteller Susan
Inbound mktr/SEO
Leader Steve
Agency founder
Social-Inbound
Connector Melissa
Marketing manager
Get-Things-Done
Kayleigh
Marketing generalist
Indie Ian
Independent
consultant
Jack-of-All-Trades
Eduardo
Office manager
Would-be apprentice
Elizabeth
Junior SEO
Accidental consultant
Mackenzie
Web designer
Savvy Nala
Small-biz owner
Tech-averse Thomas
Small-biz owner
Decision-maker Dan
Senior executive
Black-hat Ivan
SEO
Reseller Bob
Salesperson
SME/Evangelist Ben
Senior consultant
A first persona map

32. Part 2: Behavioral Analysis

33. Part 2: Behavioral Analysis
“The most effective behavioral models are distilled from interview and
observation data of real users into an archetypal description of how a
particular type of person behaves and what their goals are” – Alan Cooper
• 20 customer interviews:
– Various company types
– Varying years of experience
– Multiple recruitment methods
• Bucket, plot, & cluster!

34. Part 2: Behavioral Analysis
What are the behaviors that are important to Moz?

35. Part 2: Behavioral Analysis
Cluster interviews based on behavioral observations

36. Part 2: MORE (quantitative) data

37. Part 2: MORE (quantitative) data
Based on the information we know about these clusters, can we
segment the:
• Industry Survey?
• Pricing Value Survey?

38. Part 2: MORE (quantitative) data
Based on the information we know about these clusters, can we
segment the:
• Industry Survey?
• Pricing Value Survey?

39. Part 2: MORE (quantitative) data
Based on the information we know about these clusters, can we
segment the:
• Industry Survey?
• Pricing & Values Survey?

40. Part 2: MORE (quantitative) data
Based on the information we know about these clusters, can we
segment the:
• Industry Survey?
• Pricing & Values Survey?

41. 41
Data-Driven Dimitri
Inbound marketer/SEO
SME Evangelist Steve
Senior inbound leader
Social-Inbound
Connector Melissa
Marketing manager
Pragmatic
Kayleigh
Marketing generalist
Independent Ian
Independent consultant
Jack-of-All-Trades
Eduardo
Office manager
Would-be Apprentice
Elizabeth
Junior SEO
Accidental Consultant
Mackenzie
Web designer
Savvy Nala
Small-biz owner
Tech-Averse Thomas
Small-biz owner
Decision-Maker Dan
Senior executiveBlack-Hat Ivan
SEO
Reseller Bob
Salesperson
Grey-Hat Frank
SEO
Moz
Analytics
OSE Moz Local
Current targets:
green (primary)
orange (secondary)
Understand customer landscape

42. Core attributes
Marketing domain knowledge : Intermediate to Advanced
Beginner Expert
Strategic vs. tactical:
Tactical Strategic
Motivations and values:
Solve problems with elegant, unique quantitative insights/data to help my
team get the job done. Evangelize SEO/inbound with clients and co-workers
Job/role
• Field: SEO, Inbound Marketing, Marketing
• Level: Manager, Director, Strategist
Purchase influence: User, with substantial buying influence
Data-driven Dimitri
Advanced inbound marketer/SEO
Why Dimitri uses Moz:
Appreciates the company culture and community,
wants to help himself and his employees get solid
data, and needs to report to clients and company.
“I want the deepest and most accurate data
to dig for insights and trends; then I'll use
my own unique approach to get down to
the most meaningful story and
recommendations for my client/business.”
Client/Site profile:
About 45% are in-house marketers:
• 2-5 sites for a single company,
• a mix of brick-and-mortar and virtual, mostly larger companies with
a team of marketers
• Budget: $3,000 to greater than $10,000 a month for marketing
tools and software
30-45% work at an agency:
• 10-15 clients for medium-large businesses,
• mix of brick-and-mortar and virtual
• Budget: $500-$3,000 monthly budget for marketing tools and
software

43. Designing for
Adoption and Relevance
6/26/2014
43

46. From our art director, Derric Wise:
Color:
Each customer we have is part of our brand, if
not the brand itself. The Moz brand is
represented by the blue that is in each poster.
Branding:
All get a individual branding that we can
memorize and recognize at a glance… a unique
visual cue.
Unique props and tools:
All refer to loosely to behavior and personality,
and each persona has one representative
them.

47. Stay objective and be
friends with your personas
Rich, FUN, frank discussions,
but couldn’t help dissect
and stereotype
Lots of review and feedback
brought inadvertent biases
to light
5+ editorial reviews for
language alone
Your personas are your friends

48. How We’re Using Personas Today
6/26/2014
48

49. IA/Nav Updates

50. IA/Nav updates: detail

51. Rankings Research

52. Vision and Quarterly Planning
• Help e-team
validate a solid
vision for the
company
• Quarterly planning
for the company

53. Pricing strategy: How can we provide better value?

54. And in the coming months…
• Apply to our daily work:
– Adventure teams to use for feature prioritization and planning
– Product Management and Design to better understand user
needs and goals
– Engineers to inform decisions on how features are built
– Testers to design test cases
– Pricing reflects persona needs
– Marketers target efforts to segments
– Help Team to cater to customer needs
– New employees are on-boarded with personas

55. 55
In summary, we’ve covered:
• One (Moz’s) approach to building personas
• Designing for adoption and relevance
• How we’re using personas today
Questions?

56. Fin