We see it all the time; clients creating content they like instead of coming up with ideas their audience would like. You can hire the best designers (like us,) but if your content ideas don’t resonate with your audience, they won’t achieve anything. That’s why every time we create a brand or design a piece of content, we always start with your marketing personas.
Marketing personas are one of the most valuable tools to transform your brand and your content. They are the key to understanding your audience’s wants, needs, and frustrations—and brainstorming ideas that speak to them. Yet so many brands are functioning without them. Or, if they do have them, they’ve been long forgotten.
If this resonates with you, you’re in the right place. Here, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about creating marketing personas: why they’re important, how to make them and what to do once you’ve made them.
Marketing personas are essentially detailed “maps” of your audience's thoughts and personalities, offering insight into their perspective. By compiling these characteristics and developing unique personas, you create an accurate representation of the people you aim to attract.
Content is fundamental to creating a community of like-minded people who will support your brand long-term. But how do you spark your audience’s interest? Engage them? Turn them into lifelong fans? It’s simple; just create the content they care about.
By using personas to understand your audience, you can brainstorm, vet, and tailor your ideas to the right people, ensuring your content is always interesting, relevant, and valuable. This information also influences other brand elements, such as your tone, messaging, or visuals.
Remember, standing out in an authentic way is more important than ever, especially with the rise of AI-generated content. If you’re working without personas, you’re working without a map, and it will be much harder to grab the right people’s attention through your content.
There’s so many ways to create a “marketing persona.” From long-form write-ups to two-sentence descriptions. The key is not to overwhelm yourself; you want to create a tool that is actually useful and usable. Having said that, there are a few things to keep in mind as you create your personas:
With these things in mind, we’re giving you access to our process to help you create personas that are practical and usable.
There’s thousands of guides to create good marketing personas. (That’s how we created a process that worked for us). Each has it’s own benefits, but they can feel intimidating and overwhelming, which is why some brands give up entirely or end up with half-done personas that don’t really give them the information they need. We don’t want that to be you! So we’ve broken down our process into four simple steps that make it easy.
Before you dive in, download our Free Marketing Personas Notion Template.
This template will guide your conversations with customers and help you create your finalised personas.
It all starts with research. Even if you have long-term relationships with your clients, it’s important to take the guesswork out and go directly to the source to ask questions about who they are and what they need. Your clients know the value you provide much better than you do.
But here’s the thing. This works great if you have an established customer base. If you’re just starting out however, it’s best to look for surveys, studies, and other relevant research that might give you similar insights to your audience.
If you’re really feeling stuck, try FounderPal’s User Persona Generator, an AI tool to help you hone in on your marketing personas. One caveat: You shouldn’t necessarily take this as the final word on what your personas are—but it’s a good place to start.
First, identify the information you want to collect from your customers. To do this, take a look at the fields we’ve included in the Notion template:
This is the core information you’ll need to create your personas, and you can use these attributes to shape the questions you will be asking people. Of course, depending on your business, you can add or change these inputs as you see fit. But remember, try to keep it simple.
Next, start researching, contacting customers, and documenting your findings. You can ask questions either in-person, or via calls and emails. You can sift through customer surveys, feedback, or even reviews. (For instance, we recently reviewed the initial contact emails from leads who became customers over the past year, allowing us to identify common themes in their reasons for choosing us).
Your goal is to gather as much information as possible about your customers so that you can create the most relevant, accurate marketing personas.
If you’ve done your research well, you’ve probably got a lot of great information—maybe even too much. (It might feel overwhelming, but don’t stress, you’ll get more clarity soon.)
Once you’ve collected your research and responses, consolidate, and categorise the information. As you start to document answers, you’ll likely see common themes arise. (This is especially true when it comes to pain points.) For now, cast your net wide and list out everything your customers have in common. A great aspect of this process is uncovering unexpected insights about your audience—issues you weren’t aware they faced, preferences you hadn’t considered, etc. For example, after reviewing those first contact emails from our converted customers, we were surprised to see some common themes arise—which, in part, led to our recent brand refresh. This proves that no matter how well you think you know your customers, they know better.
Start by determining the number of personas you’re going to create. This can vary depending on your business, however, we recommend 3-5 personas—any more than that and you’re probably getting off track. (When we did this for Staygold, we created 3 different personas and envisioned them as individuals at different stages of their business journey).
Next, start to identify your persona segments.
By the end, you should have defined a group of personas that are both specific and distinct.
Now that you have your “rough” personas, it’s time to refine them. Share with anyone who could provide valuable feedback. Once you’ve made your edits and are happy with them, you can pop them in a template, Notion, Google Docs, whatever works for you. Just make sure to regularly review and update your personas as well, we all change and grow as time moves on.
Once you have memorialised your new personas, put them to work in your brand and content strategy.
And if you need help with creating personas that actually work, you can start with our Free Marketing Personas Notion Template, or hit us up directly. We’re always keen to chat.