“Understand the difference between a profile and a persona. A profile is the kind of person who would buy your stuff. Persona is insight on how buyers make decisions.”

– Adele Revella, CEO, Buyer Persona Institute

This comes up again and again. For one thing, we’d say listen carefully – Adele Revella is one of the worldwide experts on this subject (she’s @buyerpersona on Twitter, even).

The takeaway that she provides is that when you use personas for your marketing, don’t concentrate so much on demographics and who people are. Focus on what they do and – as she says – how buyers make decisions.

We hear time and time again that they were surprised a Baby Boomer used social media so much for research, or that it’s not Millennials driving digital transformation at a company but the middle-agers of Gen X.

That’s because we too easily pigeon-hole by profile. As Revella says, personas are about what someone does.
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