Create Personas That Actually Kill It
10 Apr 2025

If You’re Still Marketing to “Women 25–54,” We Need to Talk

Generic buyer profiles aren’t cutting it anymore. If you want your brand to resonate, you need to create personas that work. There are several market research services that can help bring personas to life.

A well-developed persona tells you who your customer is, why they care, and how to connect with them. But here’s the secret: the strongest personas aren’t brainstormed in a meeting room. They’re created through research.

That’s where market research services come in. When done right, they deliver personas that do more than sit in a PowerPoint — they guide strategy, messaging, product development, and media targeting.

Research Helps Develop Personas that Drive Results

Powerful personas are created from layered data, not assumptions. Start by interviewing internal stakeholders — your sales and service teams often know your customer better than anyone else. Their insights help uncover patterns worth exploring.

Next, analyze industry reports and existing customer data. Secondary research is a fast way to ground your understanding in macro trends and benchmarks.

Then, go outside. Social listening tools show what people really say online — their tone, frustrations, and preferences. It’s authentic and often surprising.

To validate what you’re hearing, layer in survey research. Large-scale surveys conducted through professional market research services help quantify behaviors, segment audiences, and pinpoint what drives decision-making. Want to go deeper? Use focus groups or in-depth interviews to bring emotion and context into the picture.

Whether you use one method or combine them all, the goal is the same: a well-rounded, deeply human understanding of your audience.

What a Strong Persona Should Include

Every persona should paint a complete picture. That means demographics, values, media habits, motivations, pain points, and preferred messaging. Include quotes, photos, and a backstory to make them feel real — not robotic. Keep it visual and easy to digest. If your team isn’t using it, it’s not doing its job.

Bring Personas to Life Across Your Organization

This isn’t just for marketers. Sales, product, creative, even HR — everyone benefits when they understand who you’re speaking to. Use personas to brief teams, guide campaigns, shape UX, and inspire innovation. The best ones are revisited and refined regularly — not created once and forgotten.

Why It Pays to Pay for Research

You can build basic personas internally. But when you invest in expert-led market research services, you gain depth, accuracy, and objectivity. Agencies bring fresh perspective, advanced tools, and strategic analysis that go far beyond DIY efforts.

Bottom line: smart brands pay for great research because it leads to better strategy — and better results.

Want Personas That Actually Drive Growth?

The real win isn’t just having a beautiful slide or a clever name for your persona. It’s creating something that feels alive — something that tells the full story of who your customer is, what they care about, and why they choose you.

A great persona doesn’t sit on a server collecting dust. It’s a living, breathing tool that anyone — from a media buyer to a product manager to a creative freelancer — can pick up and say, “I get it. This is who we’re talking to.”

That’s when personas stop being a box to check and start becoming the foundation for better, more human marketing.

Interested in reading more- Check out our blogs on segmentations:

Segmentation Research and Creating Personas
02 May 2018

Written by: Rachael Ryan

Segmentation studies allow you to walk in the shoes of different consumers, so you can really understand their buying habits and interests. We’re going to discuss the importance of research and how you can use a segmentation study to create personas.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is the process of conducting market research using a survey tool in order to group similar consumers by their purchasing habits, their common needs, and attitudes. Segmentation can take many forms, two of which are ‘Needs-based segmentation’ and the second is ‘Attitudinal segmentation’. Then advanced analysis such as conjoint analysis or hierarchical cluster analysis is often used on the data that is gathered.

Priorities

Once you have your segments, you can prioritize them. This can be done by determining who has the highest propensity to purchase your product as well as tell you how much they are willing to spend and each group’s lifetime value. This is invaluable information because then, your target audience will be the people who already want to buy your product and at a price that they want to pay. It will also allow you to understand the size of each segment, what percentage of the population they are and therefore you can understand each segment’s potential worth to you.

Segmentation will also allow you to find out what may have been missed opportunities in the past. You’ll be able to figure out which audiences are spending money on other similar items and what would make them switch their purchasing habits to your product/service. These segments can be targeted too.

Creating Personas

Once you know who your segments are, bring them to life, by creating a persona. If there are various segments – you can pick out the similar traits, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and values they have and make one persona that you can then market to. It makes marketing to your segments easier, cheaper and more effective. We can see what your persona thinks and how your brand fits into that mindset.

Segmentation has many benefits and it is very important. But by creating personas you can walk in your consumer’s shoes. Name your persona (ie. Jack!), you can even draw them for everyone to see, understand their thinking and then you’ll know who you’re trying to get your message across to. When done right, it’s a great way to totally comprehend your segmentation and use it efficiently for every marketing strategy.

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Provoke Insights is a full-service market research firm. We help build and grow brands using multiple market research methodologies including qualitative, quantitative, and secondary research. We hope to work with you in the future.

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Segmentation has many benefits and it is very important. But by creating personas you can walk in your consumer’s shoes. Name your persona (ie. Jack!), you can even draw them for everyone.
But by creating personas you can walk in your consumer’s shoes. Name your persona (ie. Jack!), you can even draw them for everyone to see, understand their thinking and then you’ll know who you’re trying to get your message across to. When done right, it’s a great way to totally comprehend your segmentation and use it efficiently for every marketing strategy.