How to make a customer persona you will actually use

Quick answer

To make a customer persona you will use, spend an hour on evidence, not imagination. Read your last twenty enquiries and reviews, answer six questions about the problem, trigger, worries, search habits, decision factors and objections, write the answers on one page, test it against new enquiries, and use it the same week on one page or advert.

Many businesses have a customer persona somewhere: a slide with a stock photo, a made-up name, an age, a list of hobbies and a quote nobody said. It was fun to make and it has not been looked at since. The problem is not the idea. A clear picture of who you serve is one of the most useful tools in marketing. The problem is that most personas are invented rather than found, and decorated rather than useful. Here is a faster, more practical way.

What a useful persona contains

A useful persona answers the questions that change what you write, where you advertise and how you sell. It does not need hobbies or a favourite coffee shop. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group on personas makes the same point: they work when they are based on real research and focus on goals and behaviour.

Step 1: gather real evidence (15 minutes)

• Your last twenty enquiries: emails, form submissions, call notes.
• Your reviews, especially the detailed ones.
• Questions customers ask on the phone or at the first meeting.
• The searches that bring people to your website, from Google Search Console.
• Notes from anyone in the business who talks to customers.

Highlight repeated words, worries and reasons. Patterns appear quickly.

Step 2: answer six questions (20 minutes)

1. What problem do they have? In their words, not yours.
2. What triggered them to look now? A breakdown, a move, a deadline, a season, a bad experience with someone else.
3. What worries them? Price, mess, being ripped off, time off work, getting it wrong.
4. How do they look for help? Search, recommendations, social media, directories.
5. What makes them choose? Speed, reviews, a clear price, a named person, local knowledge.
6. What stops them? Hidden prices, slow replies, no reviews, a confusing website.

Step 3: write it on one page (15 minutes)

Use their language. If customers say “fitted kitchen”, do not write “bespoke culinary space”.

Step 4: test it against new enquiries (10 minutes)

Over the next week, compare each new enquiry with the persona. Does it describe them? If several enquiries do not fit, you may have a second important customer type, or your persona may be what you wish your customers were rather than who they are. Adjust it.

Step 5: use it this week

A persona earns its keep when it changes something. Pick one thing to change straight away:

• Rewrite your homepage headline using the problem in their words.
• Answer their top three worries on your main service page.
• Write one blog post answering a question they ask.
• Rewrite an advert around their trigger.

Our guide to planning website content and our SEO content writing guide show how to turn persona insights into pages. Seasonal triggers are worth checking against Google Trends, which shows when searches for your service rise and fall.

Where else to find evidence

If you are new and have few enquiries yet, look elsewhere. Read reviews of competitors, especially the three-star ones, which often say exactly what customers wanted and did not get. Read questions in local Facebook groups and on forums where your customers ask for recommendations. Look at what people search for around your service; our keyword research guide shows how to do that for free. And talk to five people who match your target customer, for ten minutes each. Five honest conversations will tell you more than any amount of guessing.

Two personas or one?

Some businesses genuinely serve two very different customers. An electrician might work for homeowners and for letting agents; a bakery might sell to walk-in customers and to cafés. If the triggers, worries and decision processes are completely different, write two one-page personas, and decide which one each page, post or advert is for. If the differences are small, keep one persona and note the variations in a line. The test is simple: would you write the page differently for each? If not, one is enough.

A worked example

A mobile dog groomer assumed her customers were young professionals who wanted pampering for their pets. Twenty enquiries told a different story: most were older owners of large or anxious dogs who could not easily get them into a car or a salon. The worry was stress, not style. She rewrote her homepage to lead with “Grooming at your door, so your dog stays calm”, added a page about handling nervous dogs, and changed her Facebook adverts to show a large, relaxed dog in her van. Enquiries became better matched, and the persona fitted on one page she pinned above her desk.

Common mistakes

• Inventing details that no evidence supports.
• Too many personas, so none gets used.
• Describing who you want rather than who actually buys.
• Never using it after the workshop.
• Never updating it as the business changes.
• Keeping it to yourself. Share it with anyone who writes, quotes or answers the phone.

Getting help

Our content marketing and blog writing service is £199 a month and starts from who your customers are and what they search for. Our one-page marketing plan is a good place to keep your persona alongside your goals, and all our prices are on the pricing page.