Debunked: 10 Persona Myths You Need to Know

1. "I know my target groups and therefore also my personas".

Some companies assume that working with target groups more or less replaces the use of personas. A mistake. Although both serve to deepen understanding of certain characters, there are significant differences. While a target group summarizes a group of people who share certain characteristics, such as age, gender, place of residence or certain interests, personas are more detailed. They are concrete characters based on real data and represent human characteristics, such as needs, behavior or even a specific lifestyle. In summary, they are the living representation, for example, of typical customers, while the target group is an abstract cross-section.

2. "Creating personas is expensive and takes a lot of time".

That's true - at least if the necessary tools and experts are not available. After all, it takes about seven steps and a budget of around 10,000 euros to develop the persona in the "classic" way. Market research in particular accounts for a large share of this. However, both the time required and the costs can be reduced considerably if you leave the development of data-based personas to specialized service providers. They have the necessary tools and interfaces to the most important data. With Persona Institute, for example, companies benefit from an AI-based tool - the Persona Profiler. This gives Persona Institute access to a dataset of more than one million interviews, representative of more than 12 countries and more than 1,000 markets and industries - updated four times a year. An intelligent algorithm evaluates the data and assigns it to the desired persona parameters. Our data experts then take care of the rest and create a data-driven persona within a few days. By comparison, companies without their own market research spend an average of 672 hours to achieve the same result. By accelerating the development process with AI, Persona Institute was able to reduce not only the time required, but also the costs by 88 percent: From 10,000 euros to less than 2,000 euros.

3. personas do not need data

Although the data-driven persona is fortunately becoming more and more established - there are nevertheless cases in which persona profiles are created in workshops, only partly from data, but primarily from the gut. Talking about experiences with customers in the project team can be useful as a supplement to the database, but it is not a substitute for it. For personas to work, both internal and external data are needed - from market research institutes to data from analytics to the company's own surveys. Only then can companies obtain a truly representative persona profile.

4. "data-driven personas are free from prejudice".

In the best case, this is correct. The prerequisite: You use the right data in a suitable quantity - such as the Persona Institute: A data-driven personas is created from scientifically collected data of at least 100 people, usually even significantly more.

If personas are based on significantly less data, they can themselves contain biases - especially if the data is available in small quantities or provides answers to the wrong questions. The fact that data and its incorrect use can lead to discrimination is shown by an example from Amazon. In order to accelerate recruiting processes and identify suitable candidates, the company relied on AI-based algorithms. The problem: The developers fed the AI with historical data that primarily came from male applicants. The result: the machine identified primarily male applicants as suitable candidates for advertised positions. Examples like these show: Whether intelligent recruiting tool or data-driven persona - both are only as good as the data they contain.

5. "The more data, the better".

Anyone who works with data knows that high-quality and representative data is essential. It is true that a corresponding amount of data is needed depending on the persona - but only as long as it is relevant data. The following applies: The data should be in line with the goals that a company is pursuing with the persona. For example, a representative survey of 1,000 customers is probably worth more than the evaluation of a million social media posts consisting primarily of emojis or text fragments. Therefore, especially with a data science approach, the better the data quality, the less data is needed for a representative persona.

6. "The more personas, the better".

Anyone who takes a closer look at personas often assumes that as many personas as possible are needed to represent all groups. But as with data, the same is true here: a lot doesn't always help a lot. Despite different segments and customer types, there is often a lot of overlap between them, so that they can often be combined into one or two personas, although not always. The Persona Institute therefore asks for data on the relevant segments before developing the persona and then advises customers on how many data-driven personas they really need.

7. "Personas are only important in marketing".

While originally companies were primarily a marketing tool, today the term goes much further. Today, the buyer persona is not only an important tool in marketing, but also provides support in other areas, including product development, customer service and quality management. Candidate Personas are used in recruiting and human resources - and ensure more applications for vacancies as well as less fluctuation. Influencer personas, on the other hand, reflect typical followers and are in demand both in the social media management of companies and among influencers. This shows that instead of being just one of many tools in marketing, the influence of data-based personas goes much further. They form the basis for customer, candidate and follower centricity.

8. "High reach makes personas superfluous".

This assumption is fundamentally wrong. Although a high reach may draw people's attention to products and their brands, it does not make companies popular. On the one hand, consumers have learned to largely ignore the mass of advertising, and on the other, they want personalized offers. This means that companies are only successful if they know existing and potential customers precisely and only play out those formats that bring added value to the target group. In short: Targeting instead of wastage is the order of the day. And that's exactly what data-driven personas is essential for.

9. "Personas are a one-time investment".

Another myth that persists is the persona as a one-time investment. Because personas change along with people. For example, because their customers are older overall or because more young people are applying for jobs today than five years ago. Crises or important events in world affairs can also be triggers for a changed persona. Whether buyer, candidate or influencer persona: Evaluate all personas about once a year and adjust them if necessary. Also and especially when certain characteristics, the market, the company or even the application process (in the case of Candidate Personas) change.

10. "We have too little data to create personas".

Time and again, we talk to companies that claim to have too little data to create or commission their own personas. Although internal data from customer surveys or employee interviews can help, they are not decisive for the development of a persona. Representative data from independent opinion research institutes combined with the analytics data from the company website can also be used to create meaningful and scientifically based personas. To ensure that this succeeds, we rely on intensive consulting and, if desired, conduct persona workshops in which we discuss all available options and data sources with the company.

Do you have questions about the data-based persona? Please feel free to arrange a non-binding consultation. We will be happy to help you further.