7 Persona mistakes and how to avoid them

Mistake 1: Personas are based on assumptions, not data

Personas should represent a person who stands for a specific target group that you want to reach with your products. Personas therefore give customers and all those who want to become customers a face. They provide an insight into life circumstances, problems, goals, pain points, needs and attitudes, but this only works if all information about the persona is based on data. Personas therefore have nothing to do with gut feeling; they are based on order data, analytics figures, survey data and representative studies.

The danger: you focus on (potential) customers who don't actually exist.

The solution: Use existing data and enrich it with study results, conduct interviews and use representative data, such as the Persona Institute's data-based personas.

Mistake 2: Developing too many personas

A persona for every season, seasonal collection, product line? No!

The danger: you get bogged down.

The solution: Start with a persona. This usually results in factors that establish a second or at most a third persona - and these are usually not demographic characteristics, but motivations, purchasing behavior and values.

Mistake 3: Do not develop personas further

Every person evolves. So after you have developed a persona, it must not just stand still.

The danger: The longer a persona remains as it is, the worse it reflects your customers.

The solution: Review your personas regularly. In practice, it has proven to be a good idea to do this at least once a year and to adapt the persona to current market conditions and social developments.

Mistake 4: Creating personas for marketing only

Personas are an important tool for all marketers. But of course they can also help product development, the sales department or recruiting.

The danger: The persona created is only known to one department in the company - everyone else acts past the persona and has a different target group in mind.

The solution: Make the persona(s) as well-known as possible. Introduce them to everyone. Spread persona knowledge by setting an example of seeing everything you do in the eyes of the customer. This is the customer centricity of the future.

Mistake 5: When developing the persona, focus on things that are actually irrelevant

The persona is 47 years old, light blond, drives a red convertible and has shoe size 45.

The danger: Your persona revolves too much around the description of socio-demographics and visual characteristics.

The solution: Focus on characteristics that play a role in the purchase decision: What drives the person, what are pain points, needs? Does it appeal more to emotion or rationality? When does the persona shop? Where? What? Why?

Mistake 6: The persona is not brought to life

After you have created the persona, the results with colourful pictures go onto a flipchart or PowerPoint slides and are sent to the relevant employees by e-mail - the end.

The danger: the personas disappear into a drawer and play no role in day-to-day work.

The solution: Bring personas into the company. Bring them to life: Depict them on posters, have them write their own blog on the intranet. Make a persona podcast. Organize workshops in which you present the personas.

Mistake 7: The Buyer Persona only knows one area of the company

Creating personas and developing them further is the responsibility of marketing and that is where the persona remains. Transparency: a dead end.

The danger: Each department cooks its own soup and has different target groups in mind.

The solution: See personas as part of an ongoing change process in your company. Personas are the basis for customer-centric processes. They enrich customer data with insights from personas and vice versa.

Video insights from our cooperation partner

Our cooperation partner Dr. Christina Jacker-Hundt from marketingcorner.de has shared a wonderful video on the topic of "Stumbling blocks in persona creation" :

Text: Regina Grein