What’s in a persona?

Building personas doesn’t just mean outlining a bunch of typical customer needs that map to the
services you provide. Sure, this can be helpful, but personas go much further than that by outlining the
makeup of your ideal customer, and putting a name and other key details to the sea of faces that is your
customer audience.

In this way, when you’re creating your personas, you’re actually building out fictional characters that
represent real segments of your current and potential customer audience.

Some of the information encompassed in personas includes:

Name, age, location, interests and other personal, background information.

Business background information, including job title, whether or not they are a decision-maker or the
type of influence they might have on decision-makers.

Day-in-the-life, with a first-person description from the persona themselves. This is important, as
readers should begin to glean a full understanding of the persona from this perspective.

Specific objectives. It’s important to be as focused and targeted here as possible. In other words, don’t
just say, “Grow profits.” Say “Remove the inefficiencies that prevent a speedy time-to-market.”

Main problems. Again, it’s important to be specific. Drill down – what frustrates this persona? What
stands in the way of his or her goals?

Orientation toward the job. This part of the persona can be incredibly telling. For instance, a young
persona who’s new to the job will require more work for awareness and education. A persona who’s
been in her career for 15 years and is a confident mentor and leader, on the other hand, will require
more of an authoritative tone that doesn’t talk down to her.

Questions, including those that the persona will ask at different points in the customer journey, and how
they relate to his or her personality and position.

Content preferences. Given what we know about the persona, how does he or she like to consume
content? This includes preferred channels, the tone, style and voice that will most resonate, content
formats and more.

Keywords, including those that align with the persona’s position within the business and the obstacles
they’re trying to solve.

Don’t forget to include a photo or avatar of the persona. This extra step can be incredibly helpful for
your team to visualize the person they’re looking to connect with.
Persona examples
Let’s take a look at a few real-life personas, and examine the things that work, as well as the items that
could use a little improvement:

Good old Facilities Manager Fred. In this B2B persona from Buffer, we can get a good idea of who Fred
is, including that he has a wife and an undergraduate degree. We can see the kind of role Fred has
within his business, as well as details about the company itself.

This persona also does a good job of outlining the goals and values Fred has, as well as the obstacles that
stand in his way. However, these could be more specific and well defined – instead of just stating that
Fred has difficulty “keeping all balls in the air,” the persona could go further to describe the elements
associated with this struggle. Is it that Fred struggles with time management? Or that specific
inefficiencies make it difficult for him to get everything done?

The same goes with the listed objections: We understand that Fred doesn’t want to look dumb – nobody
does! But what types of concepts worry him the most? Is he looking to be more educated about certain
things? Or is it that he doesn’t like the use of industry jargon? These are all questions worth asking and
answering, which can help you further drill down your messaging and overall appeal.
Here we have Director Diane, another Buffer persona. Compared to Fred, Diane is much more well-
rounded in her B2B persona – we can see what a day is like for her, the problems she runs into, her
goals and aspirations, the experience she’s seeking when looking for products and services and more.

It’s interesting here that we also have a mix of bulleted statements, as well as quotes from Diane herself
within the PROBLEMS section. It’s very beneficial to let your personas speak for themselves. This little
touch goes a long way toward showing the individual’s personality and can provide cues to the type of
language the persona uses and what messaging might resonate with him or her. Definitely take the time
to create first-person statements from your personas, but ensure that these are carefully thought out
and incorporate his or her experience, pain points and motivations.
This B2C persona from Munro provides a good example of the power of persona design. Our previous
Diane example is very detailed, but the amount of information, bullet points and boxes can become
overwhelming, especially for internal teams that tend to glean more value from short blurbs.

In addition to its layout and design, this persona provides another interesting aspect – not only do we
have a first-person quote from Brandi herself, but we can also read over quotes from this company’s
actual customers. It’s important, though, that should you choose to include statements from your real
buyers, that they align and bring value to the persona. There must be some type of strong connection
and reason for including these quotes – otherwise you’re just splashing reviews on a page where they
don’t belong.

This persona also helps show the importance of ensuring your personas are well defined – the more
detail, the better. Although, don’t be fooled – we can understand A LOT about Brandi from her persona
here, including her experiences with shoe shopping and the channels she prefers. As Brandi shows,
personas can be information-packed without being overly wordy.
Tobi Day provides us with another example of the impact of persona design. The ways in which you
convey persona information is incredibly important – this can’t be overstated. What’s particularly
interesting with Tobi is the use of scales and bars to better describe her personality and how she
associates with technology. This gives readers a very good idea of where Tobi stands and what’s
important to her.

Another key takeaway here is the use of Tier and Archetype information, followed by related traits
(ambitious, admired, focused). This provides us with an even deeper understanding of the type of
person Tobi is, and the ways in which she might make her purchasing decisions.

Who knew that a coffee shop customer could be so well defined? Clearly Iron Springs Design did, as
their Sarah Student persona provides a great case of digging deep in order to fully understand your
customers. Not only do we get a glimpse into Sarah’s life, background and needs, we can also get to
know her in terms of her worries and fears, hopes and dreams and what would make her life easier. Her
influences and brand affinities are an important inclusion as well, as these can provide critical cues for
messaging and interactions.

Sarah also provides an ideal example of the ways in which personas can inform a brand’s use of social
media. As we can see from the “Make her life easier” section, Sarah appreciates discount incentives
delivered via social media. This can be a valuable way to connect with and convert Sarah (as well as
other customers like her) using her own channel preferences.

Using your personas: Walking through marketing scenarios

Once you’ve framed your personas and fully built them out with personality details, it’s time to take
things a step further. It’s important that you and your marketing team are able to use the information
you know about your personas to walk them through different scenarios, and apply the resulting lessons
to improve your connection with customers.

A good place to start is within your current marketing campaigns. Examine your personas and the ways
in which they would react to your existing marketing efforts – you might be surprised by what you learn,
and it could provide the perfect opportunity to shift and improve your activities to better suit your
audience segments.

Your personas are a critical resource that you’ll use again and again to shape the strategies your brand
uses to speak to your ideal customers.