Persona Development Tools

56% of sales & marketing people get customer personas wrong. Let's understand how to create personas with little/no access to first hand data... Last quarter, we analyzed 750+ “ideal customer” profiles. → 73% were just job titles & demographics → Only 27% mapped actual behaviors, buying triggers/pain points If your persona looks like this: "CMO at a mid-sized SaaS company, 35-50 years old, USA-based" You’re already off track. Here’s how to fix it: ✅ Analyze Unstructured Data (CRM alone won’t cut it) → Scan support tickets, live chats, & sales calls → Spot recurring objections & frustrations ✅ Reverse Engineer Buying Triggers → Check LinkedIn, Quora, & Reddit in your niche → Find what’s making people switch vendors ✅ Use Competitor Reviews → Study G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot → 1-star reviews show pain points (5-stars reveal what matters most) ✅ Validate with Prospects (No Costly Surveys Needed) → DM 5-10 people on LinkedIn: "Hey [Name], I see you’re working on [industry problem]. I’m putting together insights on [pain point]. Curious - what you seeing as the biggest challenge with [specific issue]?" Personas built this way drive conversions –  because they reflect actual buying behaviors, not assumptions. Find this useful? Follow → Junaid Dar

Do you think personas are useless? They're actually a skyrocket for ARR Let me show you: User personas are the 💩 They are my go-to catalyst for increased ARR and decreased churn. Yes, they are fictitious. But they are based on your actual users. Their real value shines when they're part of a larger toolkit: → Journey Maps → Habit Moments → Use Cases → Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) Understanding HOW and WHERE they show up in your product is crucial. In combination with these, user personas transform from caricatures to the most impactful design artifacts you can leverage. Start with bringing them to life: 📍Journey Maps → Not just a series of actions; they're stories → Trace your user's steps; walk in their shoes → Find critical insights into their experience → End-to-End pain points visualized Build a journey for each persona. Awesome, sounds great! But, wait, what do I journey? Great Question - Digital Activation Stages Sign-Up // Set-Up // Aha // Habit Focus on where your users are the most engaged. We call them: 📍Habit Moments → Key features that keep users coming back → Drivers for retention → Contribute to product stickiness → Increases Customer Lifetime Value Our goal is to drive users into habit loops for strong retention. The more naturally users integrate your product into their routine, the lower your churn. Create a blueprint for user retention and satisfaction by mapping these habit moments. Ok, cool. But what if I don't know the habit moments? Find your personas in the data through: 📍Use Cases → Most used interactions by personas → Shows natural frequency of scenarios Collaborate with your Data Team and go through the journeys and use cases. Together, find the use cases in the data to pinpoint habit moments. Habit moments should show you a flattened retention curve over time. This is how you know you're on the right track. Perfect. With habit moments locked in, let's find out why the users hired your product. 📍JTBD → Focuses on the 'Why' of user interaction → Helps identity solutions over features Personas focus on the WHO, while JTBD focuses on the WHY behind user actions. This combination gives a fuller picture of both the user and their motivations. 👇 Let's put it together How to get impact from personas: 💡 Create and/or collect your user personas 💡 Identify the primary use cases for each 💡 Collab with data - find habit moments 💡 Journey map their primary habits 💡 Identify the JTBD in each journey map 💡 Ideate solutions over features 💡 Partner with PM to align roadmap with habits TADA! You just used personas as a secret weapon. 💥 --- How have you successfully used personas in your work? #ProductDesign #ProductStrategy #Personas

13 years in B2B marketing. And I’ve fought the good fight. Sales has always been my internal customer, and I’ve spent countless hours trying to build buyer personas that actually help close deals. But let’s be real—most of the time, these personas feel off. Why? Because we’ve been stuck using outdated methods. The buyer personas we build are usually based on slides, interviews with our happiest customers, or a few assumptions about what our buyers care about. And then they sit in a folder, instantly outdated the moment they’re created. The truth is people change their minds. A lot. What worked last quarter doesn’t always work now, and we’ve got to keep up. That’s why I’m excited about Live Personas from Replicate Labs. They’ve created something I wish I had years ago—AI-powered buyer personas built from real-time data and enriched with the knowledge we have in-house. No more guessing. Now, you can actually interact with your persona, ask questions, and get answers based on what’s happening right now. Imagine doing roleplays with a prospect that’s built from real-time LinkedIn content and insights. That’s a game-changer. This is how we stay ahead, stay relevant, and win. If you’re tired of outdated personas and want to see how Live Personas can make a difference, check out this short video. Replicate Labs has just raised the bar for sales and marketing alignment. Again.

I just wrapped up a persona development workshop with a client this morning, and it got me thinking: How can we creatively fuse traditional approaches with new ones to redefine persona development for nonprofits? A mix of new and old: - [Traditional] Stakeholder Interviews & Surveys: The good old-fashioned way to get direct insights from an audience. - [New] VR Immersion: Walk the team through a "day-in-the-life" of a partner/volunteer/donor leveraging virtual reality for a deeper understanding. - [Traditional] Journey Mapping + Empathy Mapping: The traditional way to visualize interactions and touchpoints between the user and your organization. - [New] AI Analysis via ChatGPT: Use conversational AI to interact with website visitors, automatically segmenting them based on their needs and pain points. - [New] AR Storytelling: Use augmented reality to create compelling narratives that resonate with different donor or volunteer personas. Would you try this mix? Have you tried something else in your own mix of new and old approaches? Only some processes need new tech, but it's helpful to consider where it might make sense. If you like thinking about this kind of thing, you might want to sign up for the newly revamped Association Chat newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gaXnpj