Buyer Persona

If you’ve ever tried to market something to “everyone”, you’ll know how quickly that approach falls flat. That’s where buyer personas come in. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional profile that represents your ideal customer. It’s built from real data and educated guesses, helping you understand who you’re trying to reach and how best to speak to them.

Think of a buyer persona like a character in a story. Not just “Marketing Manager, aged 35–50” but “Claire, the mid-level marketing lead juggling team management, reporting pressure from her CMO, and a love-hate relationship with her tech stack.” Claire has goals, pain points, and preferences. She shops in a certain way, responds to specific messages, and has her version of success. Your job, as a marketer, is to know Claire well enough to create campaigns and content that work for her.

Personas usually include job title, company size, goals, challenges, preferred communication channels, purchasing behaviour, etc. The idea is to build a rounded picture based on research and input from cross-functional teams, not just text on a slide. Sales teams have valuable insights. So does customer support. Even product managers can surface valuable nuggets about what customers need and why they behave as they do.

The persona build begins with real data. You might start with customer interviews, CRM data, surveys, or web analytics… anything that tells you more about who’s already buying from you. Then, layer in some insights: what drives these people, what blocks them, what kinds of content move them closer to a decision?

Personas become especially useful at key stages: content creation, messaging, product development, targeting ads, and even training sales teams. They help align teams around who they’re building for and what matters to that person. Better still, they prevent generic, one-size-fits-all marketing materials from slipping into your campaigns.

Some marketers worry buyer personas are “fluffy” or too hypothetical to be useful. That can happen if they’re built once and left untouched. Strong buyer personas are revisited regularly, evolve with your customer data, and reflect changes in your market.

Here’s why personas matter:

• They sharpen your message by focusing on what your customers care about.
• They reduce waste by spending less time and budget on audiences that won’t convert.
• They help sales and marketing speak the same language.
• They add empathy to campaigns, shifting focus from features to outcomes.