Market Core · Audience · Module
Personas
The recurring types found inside a segment: what each is actually like, assembled from evidence rather than from a workshop — descriptive enough to be recognised, honest enough to be wrong in public.
The idea
How it works
A persona belongs to a segment. The segment says how the market divides; the persona says what one recurring type inside that division is like, and naming which segment it sits in is what keeps it from quietly becoming a description of the whole market.
A persona assembled in a workshop describes who the team imagines. One assembled from interviews, support records and sales calls describes who actually buys, and the two are rarely the same person.
The useful content is situational rather than personal: what their week looks like, what they are measured on, who else is involved in the decision, and what they have already tried.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Name the segment it belongs to
A persona without a segment is a character. A segment with only one persona was probably a persona all along.
- 02
Build it from real conversations
Ten interviews with recent buyers beats any amount of internal discussion.
- 03
Describe the situation, not the person
What they are measured on and who else is involved predicts behaviour. Age and job title mostly do not.
- 04
Include what they have already tried
The current workaround is the thing any offer has to displace.
- 05
Date it and revisit
Personas age quietly. One written three years ago describes a market that has moved.
One level in
The components of personas
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Ten interviews with recent buyers beats any amount of internal discussion about who the customer is.
The other modules in audience
Segments
How the audience divides in ways that predict behaviour and permit separate treatment — the test being whether two segments would actually be served differently.
LearnSegment value
What each segment is worth: what they spend, what they cost to acquire, and how long they stay — the number that decides where effort goes.
LearnWhere they are
Where each segment can actually be reached, in what state of attention, and at what cost — the half of audience work that makes the rest usable.
Learn