Buyer persona

Without personas, messaging tries to speak to everyone and persuades nobody. A finance lead and an engineer judge the same product on different grounds, so one message cannot cover both. With a persona, a page can address the specific worry that would move that person to act.

Personas also settle arguments. When a team debates a headline, a feature to build first or a question to ask on a sales call, the persona gives a shared reference: what does this person worry about, and what would they need to see? That replaces opinions about taste with a question that has an answer.

They help sales as well as marketing. A salesperson who knows that the operations manager is measured on missed deadlines, while the owner is measured on margin, asks better questions and brings the right proof to each. And they show gaps. If three of five deals were lost to a person nobody had a message for, the team knows where to look next.

• Interview eight to fifteen customers, including some who chose a competitor or did not buy. Ask how they decided and who else was involved.
• Look for patterns across the answers. Most products need only three or four personas.
• Write each persona around what the person is measured on and what they worry about, and use their own words.
• Keep each to a page, then check pages and sales scripts against it.
• Revisit them after a run of lost deals. A pattern in who walks away often exposes a persona that was missed.

A buyer persona describes one kind of buyer in enough detail that anyone writing a page, an email or a sales pitch can picture who is reading. It covers the person's role, the goals they are judged on, what they fear, where they look for answers and who else weighs in on the decision. A good persona is built from conversations with real customers. A stock photo with an invented hobby is not a persona.

A single sale usually involves several people. Take bookkeeping software sold to small agencies. The owner wants clear sight of cash. The office manager wants fewer invoices to chase. Both matter, and each needs a different message.

• Inventing personas from assumptions instead of interviews.
• Filling them with demographic trivia that changes no decision.
• Confusing a persona with an ideal customer profile. The profile describes the company, the persona describes the person inside it.