4 More No-Coder Personas to Pick as Your Target Audience

With the way the no-code market is booming at the breathtaking pace that it is, the no-code stage keeps getting more crowded. More platforms are added to the mix every day, catering to an ever-larger variety of user personas. The Peaka team knows particularly well how challenging it can be to keep tabs on the community, which continuously expands to involve more people from different backgrounds. It can at times feel like you are part of a Russian novel, where new characters with overly-long names enter the plot as some others whose names you have just managed to memorize vanish, only to show up later.

Helen Ryles from Makerpad gave a great intro into the various types of personalities in our community some time ago. These user personas matter because they are at the heart of the marketing efforts of no-code companies: While drawing up sales and marketing strategies, these companies focus on a target audience and try to understand its needs in order to achieve the product-market fit.

We thought it would be interesting if we picked up where she left off and gave you our own playful take on the no-coder community—different personas, their motivations, and the tools we can see them using.

Practical Genius

These people are the survivors. Among them are members of older generations: Baby boomers, Gen Xers, and Yers. Some of them have 20 or even 30 years of experience under their belts and sound business plans—they see a void in the market that they think they will fill. However, they did not gain this level of consciousness overnight. Practical geniuses probably spent years chasing dreams, setting up different businesses, failing, getting up on their feet only to fail once again. This determination and perseverance are the reasons they garner a lot of respect from people, especially in the United States. Now that they understand what it takes to be successful, they are looking for ways to improve their chances.

Practical geniuses are startup founders, small business owners, or serial entrepreneurs. They are highly motivated: Whether it is to grow their business or attract investment, their mindset is completely homed in on finally making it this time. They understand how short their runways are and how scarce the resources at their disposal might turn out to be. That's why no-code can be a godsend for practical geniuses. They realize that a few thousand dollars per month's worth of savings that would otherwise be paid as salary to a developer on their payroll can make the difference between success and failure.

No-code platforms such as Integromat or Webflow are good fits for these people. Such platforms can be utilized to develop proofs of concepts, build MVPs, and automate certain workflows. As the needs and requirements get more complex, a more potent tool like Peaka would be a better choice for scaling.

Frontline Warrior

These are foot soldiers who feel the pressure in the heat of a battle and bear the brunt of an attack. They fight at the forefront, most of the time hung out to dry. They might ask for help in the form of supplies or reinforcements, but there is no guarantee that they will get any on time.

Modern enterprises employ thousands of these frontline warriors. These are domain experts with a deep knowledge of their fields. They are motivated to get things done and further their careers to become business leaders one day, but the roadblocks they run into make maintaining that motivation really difficult. They are masters of spreadsheet tools like Excel.

Frontline warriors are always pressed for time—they have meetings to attend, product development goals to achieve, reports to write on products or services offered, and deadlines to meet. When they ask the IT department for help, they usually get very little because the IT department is already overwhelmed by similar requests.

No-code tools are great for such people, who are tech-savvy enough to fend for themselves. They are only a few steps away from becoming citizen developers, who are business professionals capable of using no-code platforms to develop business tools in their own domains of expertise. Both Airtable and Appsheet are good choices for frontline warriors. These two can help citizen developers build applications, automate workflows and make integrations with the existing systems.

Knight-errant

A knight-errant (literally 'wandering knight') is a character you must have come across in many medieval tales. Traveling from one town to another in pursuit of adventure, fame, and romance, this idealistic character would always be in search of a noble cause to devote his life to. He would live to right wrongs, beat the bad guys, save damsels in distress (and even slay a dragon for you if you asked him nicely), but never settle down. Think of him as a more competent Don Quixote—without the hallucinations, of course.

The knights-errant of real life are none other than the freelancers of the software industry: Moving from one gig to another, working at their own pace, looking for better opportunities but never making long-term commitments, or looking for a full-time job, if at all. These people put their developer skills in use to solve other people's problems and make their dreams come true. They are lifesavers for people who lack the technical skills to build a business or grow an existing one. Freelancers are motivated by the desire to monetize their developer skills and extend their reach to more customers.

These modern knights-errant work solo or as part of an agency. No-code platforms help them expand their customer base, find new opportunities that can better utilize their skills, and ship more apps in a shorter time. Coming from coding backgrounds, these freelancers are in a better position to leverage more capable tools like Peaka or Bildr. They can take advantage of visual design capabilities of these platforms and inject code whenever they feel the need.

Young Grasshopper

"Patience, young grasshopper!" goes the famous internet meme. It is a reference to a quote from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu and probably a piece of advice the young grasshoppers of today, the Gen Zers, could use.

The young grasshoppers of today are at their best on social media—they are digital natives. What motivates them is a drive to express themselves and interact with their environment. Their learning process differs from that of the previous generation, too: They like to spend time experimenting with different stuff and enjoy discovering new things by themselves through trial and error.

Some young grasshoppers are young entrepreneurs starting a business or running successful tech companies in their teens already. They are learning the ropes and trying to find their way in business life while maintaining a work-life balance. However, their impatience can, at times, work against them. They are quick to take an interest in a subject, but they lose their interest just as quickly, unable to maintain their concentration for long. Because of this, their ideas rarely turn into finished products. Quick results are key to keeping these young people motivated.

A no-code platform like Glide, where this new breed of young grasshoppers can put their creativity in action and see the results in a short time, suits their needs and habits. For the more tech-savvy among them, Peaka is perfect. That’s because Peaka goes one step beyond offering a visual designer and makes it possible for youngsters to turn their ideas into powerful web apps.

Conclusion

This wraps up four common user personas showing interest in no-code tools. It is highly likely that there will be even more complex no-code personas in the future as this particular technology finds new uses in new homes. We promise to keep Peaka evolving so that everyone can be a no-coder one day.