According to a HubSpot blog post, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” That’s as good a definition as I’ve seen, so I’ll give them a hat tip for it.
Developing personas can be a key step in understanding your customers. They help your team understand who your customers are when creating content for them and marketing to them.
Personas can include such information, if relevant, as:
- Name
- Age
- Gender
- Race
- Income
- Location
- Purchase concerns/pain points
- Role in a purchase
- Emotional triggers
- Where online and offline they get information
- Photo of the person
- And so forth
Obviously a B2B persona will be very different from a B2C one.
This is a sample persona from a shoe company.
Key to HubSpot’s definition is that your personas should be based on “market research and real data”. Your personas will be driving your marketing activities for some time. This isn’t a time to guess. Talk with your customers and conduct surveys.
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