Persona mapping

If we’re talking about the traditional kind, a persona profile includes surface-level details such as demographics (age, gender, location), job role, goals, and challenges – helpful starting points, but too vague on their own. To make them meaningful, and actionable rather than descriptive, we ground them in deeper insights – including behaviours, motivations, decision-making factors, and preferred communication styles. This way, we can speak to them, not at them.

Relying on traditional personas alone can be dangerous, reducing your marketing efforts to no more than mere guesswork. However, when combined with data-backed insights, they can be valuable in understanding the needs, behaviours, and core motivations of your audience. To do this, we combine demographic overviews with hypotheses from our detailed empathy mapping exercise, before speaking directly with the people we’re picturing. Nothing is more valuable than firsthand experience here.

Well, that depends on how many target markets you serve and how your customers’ needs evolve at different journey stages. However, too many can overcomplicate your marketing strategy. A good rule of thumb is to create three to five well-defined personas that reflect distinct, high-value audience segments without unnecessary overlap.

Yes. Your audiences’ needs, goals, and behaviours evolve over time – a persona that doesn’t move with these changes will quickly become obsolete and may mean any planned activities or communication risk missing the mark. This is why we recommend revisiting them regularly, making sure they accurately reflect your target audience at any given moment.