Customer Persona: How to Create and Where to Find Templates

A customer persona (also known as a client profile, buyer persona, or customer avatar) is a detailed description of the ideal or typical representative of your target audience. This profile includes all key information about the customer "persona": demographics, interests, values, motivations, behavior, pain points, and needs.

What is the difference between a customer persona and a target audience description

A target audience is a broader group of people united by common characteristics (e.g., "men aged 25-35, living in large cities, interested in fitness"). A customer persona, on the other hand, refers to a specific individual, as if you were describing a person who perfectly represents your target audience. While a target audience answers the question "who are our potential customers in general?", a user persona answers the question "who is our ideal customer?".

An individual profile usually contains much more detail about the individual: not only their age and income, but also lifestyle, values, motivation, typical problems, and goals.

What does a customer persona include

Demographic data: basic information such as age, gender, marital status, education, occupation, income level, and location.
Social and psychological profile: personality traits and psychographic characteristics such as interests, hobbies, values, beliefs, and lifestyle. What does the customer enjoy doing in their free time? What are their priorities and views? What is their lifestyle? As an example, do they value sustainability and conscious consumption, or are they a pragmatist focused on profit?
Problems and pain points: issues or difficulties that the customer wants to solve with your product or service. In other words, what need lies behind their interest in your offering. It is important to articulate the problem you are solving for the customer. For example, a consumer's pain point is "not enough time to go shopping", and your delivery service resolves this issue.
Motives and goals: what drives the customer to act, what are their goals and expectations. Motivation can range from saving money or time to increasing status, improving comfort, or achieving enjoyment. The goal can be practical ("buy a reliable car for the family") or emotional ("enjoy driving a stylish car").
Behavior and purchasing habits: how the customer behaves when choosing and purchasing a product. This includes preferred information channels (for example, searching for reviews on YouTube or reading articles on industry blogs), purchase frequency, and typical decision-making patterns (impulsive buying or taking time to consult and compare several options).
Engagement channels: the most effective points of contact with a given customer. Find out where this person spends time and what channels you can use to reach them. For example, one customer segment is active on social media apps, while another prefers industry forums and responds to email newsletters.

Example. Let's say a company sells women's sportswear. A potential customer profile might look like this: "Anna, 28, lives in a large city, married, has no children. She works as a marketer in an IT company. She has an income of around $65,000 a year. Anna takes her health seriously: she goes to the gym three times a week and follows a diet. Interests: fitness, yoga, traveling, fashion. Values: she strives to stay in shape, wants to look stylish and modern, and supports eco-friendly brands. Pain points: she does not like long shopping trips since she does not have enough time. Motivation: to save time and buy comfortable, high-quality sportswear. Behavior: she actively uses Pinterest and YouTube to get inspiration for her outfits and reads reviews. She compares prices online and chooses the store with the best service and delivery. Communication channels: she responds to blogger recommendations and reads email newsletters with reviews of new products."

Why customer personas matter

Precise targeting and effective budget allocation. By understanding the specific customer persona, a company can focus on the audience most likely to make a purchase.
Personalization of marketing and communications. A customer persona is essential for developing relevant content, tone, and sales pitch. For example, if your audience is young mothers who value safety, you might emphasize the eco-friendliness and safety of your product.
Choosing the appropriate promotion channels. For example, an audience aged 50+ may respond better to television or search advertising, while millennials may prefer social media and bloggers, and a select group of IT specialists may trust professional communities and webinars.
Improving products and services. For example, if your customer base includes many busy people for whom time is critical, then it is worth focusing on speed of service or delivery.
Developing a strategy and CJM (customer journey map). Customer persona makes it easier to map out their steps: where they first learn about the brand, how they compare options, what might become a point of failure, and what will prompt them to make a purchase.

How to create a customer persona

1. Segment and analyze your current audience. Segment existing or potential customers into groups based on specific characteristics: demographics, behavior, and needs. For example, for a fitness club, target segments might include students, young professionals, women over 40, and professional athletes, each with their own motivations. Within each segment, select the most representative customer type for which to build your profile.

2. Collect customer information. This is the most time-consuming and important step that can take up 70–80% of the total time spent developing the persona. There are many data sources, and it is worth combining a number of those for a complete picture:

Current customer base analysis. Review the information you already have: CRM data, customer databases, purchase history, and web analytics. Analyze who is already buying your product: age groups, location, channels they use to make a purchase, what they buy, and how often. If you use customer data platform (such as the Altcraft CDP platform), it will help you consolidate information from various customer databases and channels into a single profile for each client.
Online analytics and behavioral data. Use web and social media analytics tools. These provide a lot of useful statistics: the demographics of your website visitors, and on-site behavior (which pages they view, how much time they spend).
Surveys and questionnaires. The classic method is to directly ask customers about themselves. Conduct an online survey: for example, via Google Forms, Survio, or the Altcraft platform.
In-depth interviews (CustDev). For more thorough insights, interview actual representatives of your target audience. Select a few clients (preferably the most typical ones) and invite them for a conversation.

How to properly conduct CustDev interviews? What questions to ask? Read here.

Reviews and mentions analysis. Read what your customers (and even your competitors' clients) are writing in their feedback. These could be reviews on Google, forums, or social platforms. People often directly state their pain points and needs, such as "I could not find this feature" or "It would be great if the product had this option".
Competitor research. Who are their clients? Whom are they targeting? Check case studies, public materials, and presentations: sometimes these may include a portrait of your target audience. Additionally, read reviews of your competitors' products to get an idea of what their audiences are complaining about or praising and how this may be used to make your offers more attractive.
External research and analytics. If your business is relatively new or data is limited, consider consulting third-party market analytics. Industry reports and consumer behavior studies may provide general characteristics of your target audience.
Observing customers offline. For a retail business, it is helpful to observe your customers in-store, conduct exit surveys, and talk to the salespeople who interact with them.

3. Summarize and segment the data. After collecting the information, the analysis phase begins. Look at the data and try to identify common patterns: recurring characteristics, typical problems and motivations expressed by different clients. Group similar clients based on these patterns. It often turns out that there are several different client types. For example, you may realize that you have "Andy, a techie who makes choices based on features and price" and "Maria, an empathetic buyer who values brand and service". These two types are very different and require individual approaches.

4. Describe the persona. Once you have identified a specific client type, bring them to life on paper. Come up with a name (this will make it easier to refer to the persona, for example, "Maria, housewife" or "John, video games enthusiast"). Fill out all the profile details mentioned in the description: demographics, job position, interests, goals, fears, needs, behavior, and favorite channels. It is best to do this in a coherent text or as a questionnaire. Recall phrases you have heard from clients and include them in the description to add realism. You can even add a photo (for example, a stock photo of someone similar to the persona).

5. Validate and put to use. First, check the persona for soundness and relevance to real clients. You may show the profiles to colleagues from the sales or customer service departments to see if they recognize their clients in these personas. If not, you may have missed something or made incorrect assumptions. Second, test the hypotheses based on the persona. For example, if a persona suggests that the client is price-sensitive, try a discount promotion and observe the response.

Where to find customer persona templates

To avoid starting from scratch, use ready-made templates and tools for creating customer personas. For example:

Xtensio online service allows you to interactively fill in the persona fields (demographics, goals, pain points, motivation, etc.) and create a beautiful customer profile.

Ready-made Excel forms, such as the Demand Metric template with multiple tabs for different personas where you can enter all the data.
Canva is a great option if you want to create a visually appealing customer persona. Simply search for "buyer persona", choose among dozens of templates and easily adapt them to your audience.

Customer persona in B2B

The principles here are largely similar to B2C, but there are several nuances to consider:

Although the customer is a company, you need to describe a person. In B2B marketing, your end customer is an organization, but decisions are made by specific individuals. Therefore, a B2B customer persona typically focuses on the decision maker or several key roles. For example, your product is business software. The purchasing decision may be influenced by the initiator (such as the head of the IT department seeking a solution), the economic decision maker (the CFO or CEO who approves the budget), and the future user (the ordinary employee who will work with the software). Ideally, each role should have its own persona: what is important to the CFO (ROI, reliability), what concerns the IT specialist (functionality, integrations), and what the employee needs (ease of use, support).
Detailing specific aspects. For example, a person's position and level of responsibility (CEO, middle manager, engineer, etc.), their professional pain points (what will improve the company's performance, reduce costs, increase team efficiency), and decision-making criteria in a corporate environment (focus on quality for the quoted price, safety or regulatory requirements).
More rationality. Even in B2B, people are still people, and an emotional component cannot be excluded (for example, personal affection for a brand or aversion to risk). But in general, a B2B persona is more rational: they rely on numbers and benefits, and often make decisions collectively (by the board of directors or committee).

Mistakes to avoid when creating a customer persona

Persona has no purpose. If you create a persona without actual purpose, the information will be used ineffectively. Always start with the question: how will we apply this persona? For example, for advertising, for developing a new product, for website personalization.
Stereotypes and assumptions instead of data. A marketer might think stereotypically: "Our clients are probably young and savvy, they care about trends", which may be way different from reality.
Overly generic persona. For example, the statement such as "our customers are women aged 18 to 50, of any profession, with a yearly income of $35,000 to $150,000" is too general.
Excessive detail. Remember the main goal: to support business decisions. Including a client's favorite book or dog breed is only worthwhile if it is relevant to the product.
Ignoring psychographics. If you only describe the customer as "male, 30, engineer, average income", you won't understand how to sell them anything. It is a mistake to create a customer profile and ignore their values, motivations, concerns, and priorities.
Poor or outdated data. If the information is collected incorrectly or the sample is unrepresentative, the profile will be false. Customer environments and behaviors also change over time. Creating a persona once and using it for years without updating is a huge mistake.
Blindly copying other personas. Sometimes you may find examples of a competitor's customer persona or a typical avatar for your industry online. Using these without checking is also a mistake.

Conclusion

A customer persona is a description of the key characteristics of a client: who they are, what they are interested in, and what their needs are.

Such a profile is necessary to understand the audience and build communication based on facts, not assumptions. Personas make it easier to choose promotion channels, offers, and make creative decisions. As a result, marketing campaigns become more effective, conversion rates increase, and relationships with clients become more stable.