What it is for
A buyer persona is a simplified, concrete portrait of your ideal customer. It helps you choose channels, messages and offers with a real person in mind rather than a generic audience.
What it contains
- Who they are: fictional name, age, role, family or business context.
- Goals: what they want to achieve.
- Problems and frustrations: what is holding them back today.
- Objections to buying: price, trust, time.
- Where they get information: channels, websites, people they trust.
- What convinces them: proof, messages, guarantees.
Where to get the information
From conversations with your best customers, the questions that come in by email and phone, reviews, and data from your website and CRM. A persona built on assumptions leads to the wrong messages: a little verified information is better.
An example: the ceramics workshop
Anna, 42, is looking for original gifts with a story behind them. She wants to impress without spending too much, and worries that a handmade item will arrive broken. She gets her information on Instagram and asks her friends for advice. What convinces her are photos of the workshop and insured shipping. The result: posts about the making process and a prominent replacement guarantee.
Mistakes to avoid
- Describing a customer “for everyone”: if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.
- Making up details without checking them with real customers.
- Creating too many: two or three well-made personas are enough for almost every small business.
