Creating customer personas, or customer avatars, is a great way for businesses to nail down the types of people who would be interested in buying their product or service. It’s a great exercise for challenging your own preconceptions of what your target audience looks like and also identifying other types of customers you may not have thought about before. This guide can help you identify and create your own customer personas, and also includes a handy template to fill in yourself.

A customer persona is a fictional character that represents a segment of your target audience. It combines demographic, behavioural, and emotional insights to help you connect with customers more effectively. By understanding your audience’s motivations, fears, and needs, you can design marketing that truly resonates. The goal of every persona is empathy – to understand what drives your customer and why they choose your brand.

There are different types of customer personas, such as customer journey-based personas that map out the stages and touchpoints someone may encounter when interacting with your business, demographics-based personas (the ‘who’) that describe a segment of the population, role-based personas, which are used more by B2B businesses, and psychographic personas, which focus on the ‘why’ – the lifestyle, values, interests and behaviours of your customers. A good customer persona can include any or all of these types of personas. Taking demographics, behaviours, roles, and customer journeys into account will give you a more holistic view of your customer base and help you to tailor your customer personas even more effectively.

Step 1: Gather real data

The first step when creating a customer persona is collecting data from real people. You can use surveys, customer interviews, CRM data, and Google Analytics. Tools like HubSpot Forms or Meta Insights can provide valuable information on audience demographics. If you have a sales team or anyone who deals directly with your customers, they are an invaluable source of information that you can use to create accurate customer personas. Workshopping customer personas with your team members, including the data and insights gained above, is a great way of creating fully rounded, detailed personas. If you are a startup and dont have any data, you can still make customer personas – just make a good guess to begin with and revisit it every quarter as you learn more. Personas aren’t set in stone; they are fluid, and will grow and change over time to reflect your target audience.

>>Use our free Customer Persona Template to build your first persona as you read along [LINK].

Step 2: Identify common patterns

The next step involves identifying common patterns revealed by the first step that define your audience. Don’t make the mistake of segmenting only by surface-level details like age, gender or job title. While these can be useful, they don’t explain why people would buy from you or what drives their decisions. Instead, group customers based on their goals, their challenges or pain points, and their behaviour. By identifying these shared motivations or barriers, you will begin to see patterns emerge that will form the basis of your customer personas.

Step 3: Build detailed profiles

Step three is the fun part – building detailed profiles. Include as many details as possible, from name, job titles and demographics to their lifestyle, interests, pain points, preferred channels, and more. Give your customer persona a name, find a stock image that could represent them, or try drawing a picture of them. Ask questions about this persona and try to answer them with the data that you have. What are their personal hobbies? Do they use social media? Which channels do they prefer and how do they use them? What does their typical day look like? All of these questions can help you to refine your personas further

You should create at least three customer personas to help you target different audience segments. For example, some people will prioritise speed and convenience over everything, whereas others will look for brands that share their own personal values. Some people will buy the cheapest option available, and others will take the time to research all available options and choose the one that meets their needs. 

Step 4: Refine and revisit regularly

The final step is not ‘final’ at all – in fact, you should continue to work on refining your personas as you learn more about your customers. Revisit your customer personas yearly or whenever there is a major shift within your industry or the world in general. Consider the impact that something like COVID had – this is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (fingers crossed) that had far-reaching, often permanent effects on customer behaviours.

Here is a good customer persona example that takes multiple data sources into account and creates a person you can easily imagine and empathise with, showing her wants and needs, pain points and fears, decision-making processes and rationale behind her choices.

Name: Hannah Wilson

Age: 37

Occupation: Primary school teacher

Family: Married with two young children

Location: Lincolnshire, UK

Income Bracket: Middle-income household

Customer Type: B2C – purchasing products and services for personal use (home improvement, lifestyle, or family-focused services)

About Hannah

Hannah and her husband recently bought their “forever home” just outside Lincoln. Between work, school runs, and family life, she spends very little time researching companies – when she needs something, she wants it sorted quickly and without hassle.

She uses her phone for almost everything: shopping, reviews, and bookings. While she’s confident online, she’s cautious about spending money with brands she doesn’t know. For her, trust and social proof are essential.

Goals and Motivations

Hannah’s main goal is to create a safe, comfortable, and attractive home for her family while managing a busy lifestyle and a modest household budget. She loves supporting local businesses, especially when they feel personable and community-minded.

Convenience and reassurance drive most of her decisions. She’s happy to pay slightly more for a business that communicates clearly, turns up on time, and makes her feel confident she’s made the right choice.

Challenges

Hannah often feels overwhelmed by too many choices online. She doesn’t have time to compare every option or read through pages of technical information. When she looks for a service, she’s put off by complicated websites, unclear pricing, or slow replies.

She also worries about being “ripped off” or wasting time on unreliable suppliers. Businesses that lack reviews or don’t look professional online are quickly dismissed.

Buying Behaviour

Hannah typically begins with a Google search (e.g. “best kitchen fitter near me”, “family photographer Lincoln”, “local website design for small business”). She clicks the top few results and quickly scans websites to check:

• Is the business local?
• Does the website look trustworthy and up-to-date?
• Are there clear prices or examples of previous work?

She relies heavily on Google Reviews, Facebook recommendations, and before-and-after photos. A strong local presence, such as community engagement or charity partnerships, increases her trust significantly. Once she’s found a few options, she’ll send an enquiry through a contact form or social media message. If she doesn’t get a reply within a day, she’ll move on.

Digital Habits

Hannah uses Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest daily, mainly for inspiration and local updates. She rarely uses LinkedIn. She prefers short videos, visual content, and customer stories that feel relatable. She’s drawn to clear messaging like “Stress-free garden transformations for busy families” rather than vague marketing speak.

Most of her online browsing happens on her phone in the evenings after the children are asleep, so websites need to be mobile-friendly and quick to load.

Personality and Values

Hannah is family-oriented, practical, and community-minded. She values friendliness and reliability above all else. She prefers to support small local businesses that feel authentic and approachable. Pushy sales tactics or overly corporate tones quickly turn her off.

Key Insights

Hannah represents the time-poor but quality-conscious consumer – someone who wants trustworthy local services delivered with professionalism and care. Her decisions are guided by trust, clarity, and convenience rather than technical detail or price alone.