Persona
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A semi-fictional representation of the individual buyer or user. Describes their role, goals, pain points, and decision-making process.
A persona is a detailed description of a specific type of buyer or user. Not a demographic profile. A behavioral one. What is their job title? What does their daily work look like? What problems frustrate them? How do they evaluate solutions? What objections will they raise?
Good personas are based on interviews with real customers, not marketing team brainstorming. Talk to 15-20 customers and prospects. Ask about their day, their challenges, their goals, their evaluation process. Patterns emerge. Those patterns become your personas.
Most B2B companies need two to four personas. A developer tools company might have: the individual developer (user), the engineering manager (evaluator), the VP of Engineering (decision maker), and the CTO (economic buyer). Each persona sees your product through a different lens and needs different messaging.
Examples
A persona for a developer tools company.
Persona: Sarah, Staff Engineer. She leads a platform team of 6. She spends 30% of her time on infrastructure operations she wants to automate. She evaluates tools by reading docs and trying free tiers. She will recommend to her manager but does not control budget.
Different personas need different content.
The developer persona wants documentation, code samples, and a free trial. The VP of Engineering persona wants a business case, ROI calculator, and customer references. Same product. Different messages for different people.
A persona based on assumptions fails.
Marketing creates a persona assuming the buyer is a CTO. Sales discovers most deals are driven by engineering managers who never talk to the CTO. The persona is rewritten based on actual buying behavior, and conversion rates improve 40%.
In practice
Read more on the blog
Frequently asked questions
How many personas should a company have?
Two to four for most B2B companies. One for each distinct role in the buying process. More than five usually means the personas are too granular and the team cannot create distinct content for each one.
How do you validate personas?
Interview 15-20 real customers and prospects. Ask about their daily work, challenges, evaluation process, and decision criteria. If your persona matches what they describe, it is valid. If not, rewrite it. Revisit personas annually as your market evolves.
Related terms
A description of the company (not person) most likely to buy, succeed, and expand with your product. Your best-fit customer.
A group of customers or prospects that share common characteristics. How you divide the market into targetable groups.
How you define what your product is, who it is for, and why it is different from alternatives. The foundation of every marketing decision.
The specific words you use to communicate your positioning to different audiences. Positioning is singular. Messaging multiplies.
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