Before creating personas, it is important to understand that without customer profiling, all marketing and product strategies are in vain. This is a process that allows you to divide your audience into clear segments, identify key behavior patterns, and form the basis for effective communication with potential customers.
In this guide, we will analyze how to create a persona step by step.
I will start with a clear definition, analyze what types of personas exist and why they are so important for business, then move on to the practical part, where I will show what data needs to be collected, where to look for it and how to turn dry analytics into working profiles, after that I will analyze the key mistakes that should be avoided, and in the end I will explain how to correctly use personas in marketing, sales, and product strategy so that they really work, and do not remain just a marketing document.
As you progress through the article, you will understand what tools are needed to collect information, how to segment the audience, and what characteristics really matter. As a result, you will have not just a theoretical understanding, but a ready-made algorithm for creating personas that you can immediately apply in your work.
What is a persona?
A persona is a segmented, data-driven representation of a typical user or buyer, including demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics that define their motivations, barriers, preferences, and decision triggers. Unlike traditional market segments, a personal profile is built on a deep analysis of needs, behavior patterns, and brand touchpoints, allowing you to tailor marketing, product, and communications strategies to the real expectations of your audience.
When marketing focuses on vague characteristics like “men aged 30-45 interested in technology,” communications lose precision. But when I know that my potential client is Alexey, a CTO at a startup who is tired of complex tools and is looking for simple solutions to manage his team, I can tailor content, offers, and product to really hook him.
What key elements does a persona include?
To make the persona work and not just a pretty description, I include several important blocks:
- Biographical data: age, gender, place of residence, marital status (if it is important for the business).
- Professional context: position, level of responsibility, type of company he works for.
- Pains and problems: what difficulties he faces, what prevents him from achieving his goals.
- Motivation and triggers: what factors influence his decisions, what inspires him or, on the contrary, irritates him.
- Goals: what he wants to achieve in his work, business or life.
- Where he spends time: what social networks he uses, what groups he reads, what platforms he communicates on.
- Content preferences: how he perceives information - he likes short videos, expert articles or live communication.
How is a persona different from a simple description of a client?
A classic description of the target audience answers the question "who is our client?", and a persona explains "why he makes certain decisions?" This is what makes it a valuable tool in marketing, sales, and product development.
In the next section, I will discuss why businesses need personas at all and how their use helps them work more accurately.
Why does a business need personas?
What to do when content doesn't go viral and doesn't meet customer needs? What to do when advertising campaigns become expensive and ineffective, and product decisions are made without taking into account the real pain points of users? Use personas! I use personas because they help:
Create accurate content and advertising
A persona gives a clear understanding of what topics are interesting to the audience, in what tone it is better to speak to them and what triggers work. For example, if I know that my client is a small business founder who is stressed due to high competition, I will focus on scaling strategies, cases of other entrepreneurs and solutions that save time.
Optimize the customer journey and sales
A persona helps to understand how exactly users make decisions, what objections they have and what can speed up their movement through the funnel. If I see that my audience compares options for a long time before buying, then I should add more analytics, comparisons and evidence of the product's effectiveness.
Make the product more convenient and in demand
It is important to consider not only the functions but also the UX in the product, which means you need to understand how customers interact with the interface, what causes them difficulties, what problems they are trying to solve. Without personas, developers can rely on their own ideas, which do not always correspond to reality.
Choose the right promotion channels
A persona helps you understand where to look for your audience and how to communicate with them. If my target audience is B2B managers, I will bet on LinkedIn and Telegram channels with analytics, and if it is Gen Z, I will focus on TikTok and Instagram.
Without personas, marketing turns into chaotic hypothesis testing, the product does not solve real user problems, and sales face constant barriers.
What are types of personas?
There are various types of personas based on business goals, and for each task.
Buyer Persona
Used in marketing and sales to discover who is the decision maker, what their pain points, motivations, and decision factors are. Helps you design targeted advertising campaigns, improve sales processes, and raise conversion at different levels of the funnel.
SaaS Buyer Persona
Is distinct from the classic buyer persona in that it takes into account the specifics of the subscription model, the length of the decision cycle, and the need to demonstrate the value of the product through trial versions or demo presentations. Here, considerations such as readiness for automation, budget for software solution, company role, and technical skill level are important.
User Persona
Used in UX/UI design and product creation, it helps identify how the client employs the product, what they expect from it, their preference, and their pain points. It is used in interface improvement, rendering it more user-friendly, and reducing user churn.
Social Media Persona
Founded on the way audiences consume content, the platforms that they use, the problems that they relate to, and the types of content that resonate with them. All these form the basis to build contextual content, ad targeting, and social media marketing strategy.
Negative Buyer Persona
Identifies an audience that SHOULD NOT be targeted since it does not convert, requires too much resources, or does not bring profit. Negative persona helps eliminate non-converting segments from the target audience, reduces customer acquisition costs, and targets only profitable audience segments.
What persona do I require?
- If you have to improve the product, then User Persona.
- If you need to boost sales, then Buyer Persona or SaaS Buyer Persona.
- If you are seeking growth in social networks, then Social Media Persona.
- If you need to exclude an irrelevant audience, then Negative Buyer Persona.
How to Create a Persona: A Step-by-Step Process
For a persona to be truly useful, it’s important not just to come up with a description, but to rely on real data and a structured process. I break down the creation of a persona into several key steps that help turn disparate customer data into a clear, workable profile.
Step 1: Collecting and analyzing data
A persona is not based on guesswork, but on facts, so the first step is a deep analysis of the audience. I use several sources:
Internal data: CRM, Google Analytics, social networks, customer surveys.
Interviews with clients: personal conversations, reviews, studying behavior patterns.
Market research: competitor analysis, reports, industry trends.
Social monitoring: comments on social networks, discussions in niche groups, forums.
Step 2: Identifying key segments
After collecting information, I find common patterns and identify audience segments. It is important to understand that a persona is not a single ideal client, but a collective image reflecting the behavior of key user groups.
Step 3: Defining key characteristics
At this stage, I record key data that will help in marketing, sales, and product development:
- Demographics: age, gender, location (if relevant).
- Professional context: position, decision-making level, field of activity.
- Problems and pain points: what hinders the client, what fears and barriers they have.
- Motivation and goals: what inspires them, what problems they want to solve.
- Interaction channels: where they spend time, what platforms they use.
- Content formats: what is more convenient for them - videos, longreads, short posts, or podcasts.
Step 4: Creating a full-fledged persona profile
After analysis, I combine all the information into a single document that can be used in marketing, sales, or UX design. Here, it is important that the profile is clear, practical, and easy to use.
Step 5: Using M1-Project ICP Generator as a convenient alternative
Creating a persona manually is a detailed process that requires collecting, analyzing and segmenting data, but there is a more convenient way to speed up the work without losing quality. I use M1-Project ICP Generator, which automatically processes the data and forms a clear picture of the ideal client.
Instead of manually compiling a document with client characteristics, I can get a structured profile in a few minutes that accurately reflects the behavioral patterns of the audience, which allows me not to waste extra time and focus not on the creation process, but on the use of personas in business.
What should a working persona have? Customer Persona Checklist
✅ Buyer persona demo- and psychographics
✅ Info about the company (if applicable)
✅ Goals or objectives
✅ Jobs to be done
✅ Problems they face when trying to achieve their goals
✅ Their pains and frustrations
✅ Triggers
✅ Barriers
✅ What does your persona already know about the problem and other solutions
✅ Criteria buyer persona considers when choosing the solution
✅ Tools they use or need to do their job
✅ Places where your customers hang out
✅ Channels they prefer to communicate through
✅ Sources they prefer to consume information
You can save this checklist can be saved in notes and used at any time when you need to create or update a persona. It will help you quickly check whether all the key elements are included to ensure that the personal profile is useful, accurate and applicable in marketing, sales and product development.
Conclusion
A persona and a marketer are like links in a chain, where one cannot work without the other, because customer profiling is not a one-time exercise, but an ongoing process that underlies both online and offline marketing: when a brand opens a new market, tests advertising hypotheses, adapts a product to customer needs or even develops sales scenarios, it is a personalized understanding of the audience that allows you to make a meaningful strategy, build the right communications and direct efforts where they will give the maximum effect.
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