Buyer Personas - Best practices?

[sandervd]

Hello all;

I am trying to find some more information about how to use buyer personas correctly. We do both B2C and B2B and I can easily define 4-5 personas based on role and behaviour.

My question is about location and industry. I prefer to stick to these 4 personas and not create things like "persona type A, location 1". Or making it even more complex by adding the industry in the mix.

I assume I can make these cross-sections downstream by combining it other fields such a country or industry in, for example, a dynamic list. 

Is this also how you use it? Any recommendations or advice is appreciated.

[Ian_Matt · Accepted solution]

Hi @sandervd , Great question! I've worked with a number of companies on creating buyer personas and have found that people tend to create an additional Persona when there's a different job title or location as you mentioned. However, the best way to divide your personas is by their goals and challenges. 

So the question is does Persona A in location 1 have different goals and challenges from Persona A in location 2? If yes then makes sense to make an additional persona but if not, I would stick to what you mentioned and use a simple property like country.

You can absolutely do this as once created the Persona functions like any other contact property. Lists can be built of contact property 'Persona' = 'Persona A' and contact property 'country' = 'Ireland' and any other combination you would like. 🙂 

Ian Matthews Freelance HubSpot Expert ianjosephmatthews@gmail.com ianmatthewsfreelance.com Book A Chat Here