UX vs. Marketing Personas

The following article appears on Medium and is written by my college, Christina Ibanez. 

Not all personas are the same

Different persona formats will be necessary at varying stages of the cycle.

Taking a data-driven approach to creating personas keeps valuable user research at the forefront of team’s and stakeholder’s minds and can create alignment across interest groups. Using a persona as the north star can create a user advocacy infection and support alignment around who it is you are serving.

Personas are strongest when paired with an empathy map

What is the larger context that your persona is existing in as they interact with your message, product or service? Taking a walk in your personas shoes roots deeper into empathizing with their thoughts, feelings, and actions at each touchpoint.

I have found adding shared tasks across personas and creating journey maps for each of them aiming to accomplish the tasks highlights areas of improvement for inclusive design. Barriers to goal accomplishment in your design will be highlighted for your personas, as well as routes they take to accomplish the task.

For marketers, the message might be on point, but your timing and outreach venue could be off base. Designing an empathy map that walks through what your target buyer is doing, thinking, and feeling when they see your messaging can help you strategize timing for optimal conversion.

Connect marketing and user personas

The person buying your product is not always going to be the person using your product. It is likely, though, that those individuals are going to be interconnected somehow.



Take this toddler musical toy set. We can assume that the parent is going to be the one paying for it (The Buyer). And, the primary user will likely be the toddler. Having a strong sense of the varying thoughts, needs, desires, and goals of the personas depending on where they are in the cycle is going to improve the overall success of the business.

Try to connect with marketing, design, and development teams to analyze your personas on the continuum of interaction. While potentially strengthening the product’s development and release, it can also facilitate a deeper sense of alignment and collaboration across teams.

Christina Ibanez is a user experience designer in Denver, Colorado. She focuses on designing for social good and empower users to subvert limiting systems.