Buyer persona
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional profile of a typical buyer, based on interviews and data: their role, goals, frustrations, where they look for information and what makes them trust a product. Teams often have several, such as the user, the budget holder and the technical reviewer.
Personas sit inside an ideal customer profile: the ICP picks the company, the persona describes the people in it.
Why a buyer persona matters
Knowing what a buyer cares about makes messages, content and outreach relevant. Personas built on real conversations work; invented ones lead teams astray.
Related marketing terms
An ideal customer profile, ICP, describes the kind of company or person that gets the most value from your product and is best to sell to.
Jobs to be done is a way to understand demand: customers "hire" a product to make progress in a situation, not because of who they are.
Customer discovery is talking to potential customers to learn their problems and test whether your idea solves something they care about.
A value proposition is a clear statement of the benefit a product delivers, for whom, and why it is better than the alternatives.