A semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer, built from research and data, describing their goals, challenges, behaviors, and decision-making process — used to guide messaging, content, and product decisions.
Why it matters
Personas make an abstract "target audience" concrete and human, helping a team write copy, design offers, and prioritize features for a specific kind of person rather than an undefined generic customer.
In a sentence
"Our primary persona is a marketing ops lead at a 20-person company, juggling four disconnected tools and no dedicated engineering support."
Related terms
- Often confused with: ICP (a persona describes an individual person's goals and behavior; ICP describes the ideal company or account profile — in B2B, a single ICP account may contain several different personas, like an economic buyer and a day-to-day user).
- Synonyms: Buyer persona, marketing persona.