How Do I Create Buyer Personas That Actually Help My Marketing?

As a marketing software for small business owners, we’re always talking about how important it is to create buyer personas to help with your marketing. But the problem is, most buyer personas end up living in a random doc somewhere, sounding inspirational, and doing exactly zero work for your business.

That’s because most of the time, they describe who someone is but not how they think, buy, decide, or hesitate. And when that happens? Your marketing stays vague, your messaging gets muddy, and choosing what to post (or where to show up) feels harder than it should.

Here’s the thing—buyer personas aren’t just a branding exercise. They’re one of the most powerful tools you have to choose the right audience, clarify your messaging, and build a marketing strategy that actually converts.

Today, let’s talk about why most buyer personas fall flat (and how to create buyer personas that actually help your marketing do its job).

TL;DR: Most buyer personas fall flat because they focus on who someone is—not how they think, buy, decide, or hesitate. When you build personas around buyer psychology instead of demographics, your messaging sharpens, your content becomes easier to plan, and your marketing converts faster because it’s speaking to what actually drives action.

Why most buyer personas don’t actually work

Most buyer personas focus on surface-level details:

Age
Job title
Location
Where they like to shop
A stock photo and a name (maybe)

Then…they stop. Before they even get close to helping you really understand what makes your ideal buyer persona tick. And while that kind of persona might look polished in a doc, but it doesn’t help you decide:

What content to create
Which platform to prioritize
How to write your messaging
What offers to promote
Why someone would actually choose you

The biggest issue we see? Most buyer personas describe who someone is, not how or why they make decisions.

Here’s a quick example to help you understand. Good marketing doesn’t happen because you know your audience is “a 32-year-old small business owner.” It happens when you understand:

What problem they’re trying to solve right now
What’s keeping them stuck in the no-decision zone
What finally pushes them to take action
What objections slow them down
What makes them trust a brand

See? So when buyer personas don’t include those insights, they don’t actually help and your marketing defaults to generic guesswork.

What Are Buyer Personas (and Why They Matter for Your Marketing Strategy)

When done well, buyer personas are clear, documented representations of the people you want to attract—built around how they think, decide, and buy. They’re not built on guesses or vibes. They’re real inputs you use to make marketing decisions.

Strong buyer personas become the foundation for your:

Messaging and brand voice
Content topics and formats
Offers and pricing
SEO and blog strategy
Social media plan
Email campaigns and CTAs

When your personas are clear, your marketing stops feeling scattered. Because instead of asking, “What should I post?” you’re asking: “What would help this specific person move forward right now?”

Without buyer personas, most marketing tries to speak to everyone and ends up connecting with no one.

With buyer personas, you can also:

Choose platforms intentionally instead of trying to show up everywhere
Write content that mirrors real questions and pain points
Build offers that feel timely and relevant
Create consistency across channels because everything ladders back to the same audience

What Makes Up Useful Buyer Personas

Useful buyer personas aren’t built around demographics alone. They’re built around psychology. And the buyer personas that actually help your marketing focus on what’s happening in your audience’s head right now.

Here’s what we’re talking about when it comes to buyer psychology:

Current pain points: What problem is costing them time, money, confidence, or momentum today?
Decision-making behavior: How do they research? What makes them hesitate? What pushes them to finally act? How do they like to take in information? Are they logical or emotional buyers?
Buying triggers: What moment makes them think, “I need to fix this now”?
Buying blockers: What objections stop them from moving forward — price, trust, timing, clarity?
Desired transformation: What does “after” look like for them? What are they really trying to achieve?
Trust signals: What do they need to see, feel, or hear before they believe you’re the right fit?

For example, a useful buyer persona doesn’t just say: “30-year-old wedding planner looking for a copywriter”. It says: “Feels overwhelmed trying to explain her value, struggles to differentiate in a crowded market, and worries her website isn’t connecting emotionally with the right clients (making her SEO efforts futile).”

This is exactly what Enji’s Customer Persona Generator is designed to help you see—walking you through the questions that surface real motivations, objections, and decision drivers so your marketing actually resonates. And you can use it for free!

How to Build Buyer Personas That Actually Improve Your Marketing

Step 1: Identify Your Best Past Customers

Ideally, you want to look at real people who were great customer or clients (vs. hypotheticals). So think about those folks and look for the customers who:

Were easiest to work with
Paid/booked/bought without hesitation
Got the best results
Referred others to you

These are the people your marketing should be attracting more of.

If someone drained your energy or required constant convincing, they’re not your persona—even if they fit your demographic.

Step 2: Gather Real Customer Data

Strong buyer personas are built from patterns, not vibes.

Take a look at:

Testimonials and reviews
Sales calls and discovery conversations
Common questions in emails or DMs
Objections you hear repeatedly
Website and content analytics

Pay attention to the language people use. Those phrases are marketing gold.

Step 3: Define the Core Persona Elements

This is where your persona becomes actionable. Focus on:

Their primary goal or motivation
The problem they’re actively trying to solve
The transformation they want to experience
Where they spend time online
What content they trust
What triggers a buying decision
What causes hesitation or delay

These details shape what you say and how you say it.

Step 4: Name the Buyer Persona Functionally

Skip the regular names. A useful persona name should remind you how to market, not who they are socially.

Think:

The Overwhelmed Founder
The Visibility-Seeking Consultant
The Burned-Out Solopreneur

When you name the problem, your messaging stays focused.

If you want a deeper walkthrough of this process, read this guide on how to create customer personas—it breaks down how to apply personas directly to your content, offers, and campaigns.

How to Use Buyer Personas in Your Marketing Strategy (the part most people skip)

The real value of creating buyer personas comes from using them to make decisions. Once your personas are defined, they should guide every major marketing choice you make.

Start with where you show up. Buyer personas help you choose the right platforms—because they aren’t on all of them, so you don’t need to be either. If your ideal customer spends most of their time on Pinterest and Google, TikTok doesn’t need to be a priority.

Next, shape your content pillars around what your persona actually cares about. Their pain points should directly map to your website copy, blog topics, social posts, and email content. This is how your marketing starts feeling “spot on” instead of generic.

Buyer personas also improve SEO. When you know what questions your audience is asking, it’s easier to write blog posts that match real search intent—the kind Google and AI tools prioritize. (Hello FAQs.)

They also influence your CTAs and offers. If your persona needs reassurance, lead with case studies and testimonials. If they want quick wins, highlight efficiency and simplicity. The message changes—the offer doesn’t have to.

Finally, use buyer personas to build better marketing campaigns. Inside Enji, personas help you choose the right marketing campaign templates, tailor messaging, and plan content that speaks directly to one audience goal at a time—whether that’s lead nurturing, list building, or promoting a specific offer. Instead of guessing what to say, your campaigns are rooted in what your audience already needs to hear.

Examples of Buyer Persona Insights That Actually Help You Do A Better Job With Your Marketing

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Insight: “I don’t know what steps to take next.”
Marketing shift: Create step-by-step guides, checklists, and clear frameworks.

Insight: “I feel short on time and behind.”
Marketing shift: Emphasize simplicity, efficiency, and done-for-you options. Lead with outcomes, not process.

Insight: “I don’t trust people without proof.”
Marketing shift: Share case studies, testimonials, before-and-after examples, and real results more often—especially near CTAs.

Insight: “I need to feel confident before I buy.”
Marketing shift: Add educational blog posts, FAQs, and comparison content that answers objections before a sales conversation happens.

Insight: “I just want a quick win.”
Marketing shift: Use short-form educational content, quick tips, and low-commitment offers to build momentum and trust.

These insights don’t just influence copy—they shape your entire marketing strategy. They tell you what to create, how to say it, and where to focus your energy.

FAQs About Buyer Personas

How many buyer personas do I need?

It’s best to have a buyer persona for each of your main services or products because each solves a different problem! But we don’t recommend creating too many. Most small businesses only need one to three buyer personas. If you’re early in your business or offering one core service, start with one strong, well-defined persona. You can always add another later if your offers or audience truly split.

Should buyer personas change over time?

Yes! Buyer personas aren’t a “set it and forget it” exercise. As your offers and market evolve, your pricing changes, or your audience matures, your personas should reflect that. A good rule of thumb is to review and refine them 1-2x a year, especially if you’re noticing shifts in who’s booking, buying, or engaging.

What if I serve multiple audiences?

This usually means one of two things:

You need separate personas tied to separate offers, or
You’re trying to speak to too many people with the same message

Buyer personas help you clarify which audience each piece of content, campaign, or CTA is for—so your marketing feels focused instead of scattered.

Want to dig in more? Here is a blog post to help you market your business to multiple customer personas.

What’s the difference between a buyer persona and a target audience?

A target audience is broad. A buyer persona is specific.

Your target audience might be “small business owners.” Your buyer persona is how one type of small business owner thinks, buys, hesitates, and decides. Personas make your marketing actionable instead of vague.

Create Buyer Personas That Scale Your Marketing, Not Complicate It

Buyer personas aren’t meant to be inspirational documents that live in a folder and never get touched again. They’re decision-making tools. If your buyer personas aren’t helping you choose content topics, shape offers, or guide campaigns, start with Enji’s Customer Persona Generator.

Once you learn more about who you’re talking to, you can sign up for your free trial of Enji here to market your small business to them.

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Tayler Cusick Hollman

Founder of Enji | Small Business Marketing Strategist

Tayler Cusick Hollman is the co-founder of Enji, a strategy-first marketing platform built specifically for small business owners who do their own marketing. With 10+ years of experience in small business marketing, Tayler has helped thousands of founders create clear, repeatable marketing systems that drive consistency, visibility, and revenue—without relying on agencies or complicated tools.

Her work focuses on simplifying marketing strategy, turning plans into execution, and helping small business owners replace scattered tools with one integrated system. Tayler’s frameworks and insights are used by entrepreneurs across industries to plan, execute, and evaluate their marketing with confidence.