Persona Anti-Patterns: The Document That Describes Nobody on Earth
Your persona is named Marketer Mary. She is 41, has two kids, and likes vanilla ice cream. She has never bought anything from you.
A persona that describes nobody on earth is not a persona. It is a document that makes the team feel like it understands the customer while understanding nothing. The test is simple: if the persona could describe anyone, it describes no one, and it should be thrown away.
The document that describes nobody
The persona is named Marketer Mary. She is 41, has two kids, and likes vanilla ice cream. She reads marketing blogs, she is active on LinkedIn, and she is looking for a solution that saves her time. She has never bought anything from you, and she never will, because she does not exist. She is a composite of assumptions, and the assumptions are wrong.
This is the most common persona in B2B, and it is useless. It describes a person, not a buyer. It tells you her age and her hobbies, and it tells you nothing about why she buys, what she buys, or what stops her from buying. A team that uses this persona to make decisions is making decisions based on a fictional character's taste in ice cream.
The STFO test is the challenge to this industry: buyer personas need to die, because most of them are decorative. The test is whether the persona changes a decision. If the marketing team would write the same email, build the same page, and target the same account with or without the persona, the persona is decoration, and it should be deleted.
Demographics do not cause buying
The mistake at the center of the Marketer Mary persona is the belief that demographics cause buying. A 41-year-old woman with two kids does not buy a product because she is 41 and has two kids. She buys it because she has a problem the product solves, and the problem is the persona, not the age. The age is a fact about the person. The problem is the fact about the buying.
The Nielsen Norman Group says a persona may be fictional, but the characteristics must be grounded in real people. The persona is a composite of real buyers, not an invention. If the characteristics are invented, the persona is fiction, and fiction does not sell. The characteristics that matter are the ones that predict buying: the problem, the trigger, the objection, the budget, and the decision process.
A persona that lists a job title is the same mistake in a different form. A job title is not a persona. A VP of Marketing at a 500-person company and a VP of Marketing at a 50-person company have different problems, different budgets, and different decision processes. The title is the same. The buyer is not.
The five mistakes that make a persona useless
The first mistake is building the persona from internal assumptions instead of research. The team sits in a room, imagines the buyer, and writes down what they imagine. The result is a persona that describes the team's assumptions, not the buyer's reality. The fix is to build the persona from interviews, from support tickets, from sales calls, and from the data the company already has.
The second mistake is treating demographics as insight. Age, gender, location, and job title are facts about a person, not reasons to buy. A persona that is mostly demographics is a persona that has not found the insight yet.
The third mistake is using a job title as a persona. The title is a label, not a description. A persona has to describe what the buyer does, what they care about, and what they are trying to achieve, and a title does none of that.
The fourth mistake is writing profiles nobody uses. A persona that sits in a document and is never referenced in a meeting, a brief, or a decision is a persona that has no purpose. If the team does not use it, it is not a tool. It is a decoration.
The fifth mistake is treating the persona as a permanent document. Buyers change, markets change, and the persona that was right last year may be wrong this year. A persona that is never updated is a persona that is slowly becoming fiction.
What a real persona looks like
A real persona starts with a problem, not a person. The buyer has a problem that is costing them time, money, or risk, and they are looking for a solution. The persona describes the problem, the trigger that made them look, the objections they have, the budget they control, and the process they will use to decide. Those are the characteristics that predict buying, and they are the characteristics that a persona has to capture.
The persona also has to be specific enough to change a decision. If the persona says the buyer cares about speed, the team should be able to write a different email for that buyer than for a buyer who cares about price. If the persona does not change the email, it is not specific enough. The test is not whether the persona is detailed. The test is whether it is useful.
The document that describes nobody on earth is not a persona. It is a sign that the team has not done the research, and the fix is not a better document. The fix is the research.
Keep reading
Related guides on this site: how negative personas tell you who to stop chasing what happens when your champion leaves mid-deal how support tickets become persona research More from Persona based personalization for online stores.
Frequently asked questions
What is a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a description of a type of buyer, built from research, that helps a team decide who to sell to and how. A good persona is grounded in real data about real buyers. A bad persona is a fictional character with a name and a hobby.
What is the STFO test?
The STFO test is a challenge to the persona industry: buyer personas need to die, because most of them are decorative. The test is whether the persona changes a decision. If it does not, it is decoration, and it should be deleted.
Why are demographics not a persona?
Demographics do not cause buying. A 41-year-old woman with two kids does not buy a product because she is 41 and has two kids. She buys it because she has a problem the product solves, and the problem is the persona, not the age.
What are the five common persona mistakes?
The five common mistakes are: building the persona from internal assumptions instead of research, treating demographics as insight, using a job title as a persona, writing profiles nobody uses, and treating the persona as a permanent document that never changes.
Can a persona be fictional?
The Nielsen Norman Group says a persona may be fictional, but the characteristics must be grounded in real people. The persona is a composite of real buyers, not an invention. If the characteristics are invented, the persona is fiction, and fiction does not sell.
Is there ever a good persona?
Yes, if it is built from research and it changes decisions. A persona that describes a real buying pattern, with real motivations and real objections, is useful. A persona that describes a name and a hobby is not.