Buyer Persona Research
Know which customers to target and how, with a full roadmap for marketing, product, and growth.
A lot of companies create personas either through a groupthink exercise that doubles down on assumptions and bias, or by hiring a firm that uses demographic characteristics to come up with broad criteria. Those criteria are hard to translate into how buyers actually make decisions or what those decisions mean for long-term strategy. Both routes make ad spend more expensive and product decisions harder. They also leave you without knowing who your buyer really is, what they need to hear to buy, or how they decide to buy your specific product or service.
Pros and Cons of Typical Persona-Building Approaches
DIY/In-house Surveys
Pros
Cheaper than hiring a firm in the short term
You own the data completely, along with the software accounts where it’s sent and stored
Cons
High potential for bias, which can produce incorrect results
A limited dataset to build personas from
Lack of expertise in design and methods, leading to low response rates and misleading data
Time-consuming, adding to employees’ workload at the expense of their actual responsibilities and expertise
Internal Discussion
Pros
Cheaper than hiring a firm in the short term
A team-building exercise that brings departments together to share information on buyers that might otherwise stay siloed
Cons
High potential for bias, since assumptions go unchallenged
Typically built on feelings and opinions instead of data
The need to compromise leads to groupthink, which can shape the outcome of the personas
High-quality persona research should
Agencies
Pros
Provide objectivity
Access to experts (ideally)
Cons
Basic research built on crosstabs
Personas built from demographics only
You’re handed a large report without knowing what to do with the information or how to put it into action
Most researchers learn through on-the-job training, so knowledge gaps and incorrect research practices keep getting passed along
Be built on credible, objective data from the people who are already your customers and the people who could be
Explain who you should target and why
Walk you through your buyers’ decision-making process, including the trade-offs they make between multiple criteria
Arrive already turned into actions for you to take
Audience Personas and Targeting research gives you a roadmap to understand, engage, and land your most important buyers. These are the people you build your product or service for, build your marketing strategy around, and focus on for continued growth.
How We’re Different
Start making changes immediately. You won’t have to interpret what the research means. Every study translates the findings into who to target, what to say, how, when, and on which channel, all built on how your audience makes decisions and weighs trade-offs.
Act on real causes, instead of guesses. Highly technical, rigorous methods, such as forced trade-off analysis, causal designs and sample weighting, show what is actually causing problems and driving decisions.
Hear from the people who matter. Niche participant recruitment means your decisions are based on the specific people who matter, including prospects who aren’t customers yet, instead of whoever is easiest to reach.
What You Get
Named personas sized by share of the market. Each persona comes with who they are, their pain points, motivators and appeals, and how much of your market they represent.
A one-page persona comparison. Decision factors, pain points, motivators, channels, emotions, and marketing opportunities side by side.
Decision drivers and trade-offs. What actually moves the purchase, and what each persona will give up to get what matters most.
Messaging and creative tested by persona. Taglines, vision statements, and imagery scored separately for each persona.
Channel recommendations by persona. Where each persona looks for information and who they ask.
Recommendations sorted by who, where, what to say, and what to show.
A journey map for each persona. Stage by stage from awareness through retention, with touchpoints, emotions, problems, and marketing opportunities.
Customers’ own words. Organized by theme and ready to use in your copy.
A midpoint check-in report, a readout video, and the clean data files and recordings at the end.
Clients find this work most helpful before a new product launch or entry into a new market, when customer behavior shifts or a new competitor arrives, when acquisition costs are rising, or when deciding where to cut.
Attracting the Clients Who Can Pay for High-end Services
A multi-location service firm wanted to grow, but it kept booking consultations with people who couldn’t afford its fees, even after two screening stages. Survey research, in-depth interviews, and a competitive scan showed that hiring decisions split along trust, information, and cost. They also showed that the firm’s own website and social content were signaling affordability. The firm received three sized personas, journey maps, and a plan to reposition its brand toward the professionals it wanted. The research led to a complete repositioning of the firm’s brand and a $2M increase in revenue within six months.
FAQs
Turning a Broad Audience into Customers Ready to Book
A health and wellness coaching business preparing to relaunch needed to know which women to reach, what would move them to book, and what they would pay. Survey research with segmentation and regression analysis identified three personas. Each had its own goals, channels, price points, and imagery that moved them to act. The client received messaging, channel,and pricing guidance for each persona, plus sales copy built from respondents’ own words. The client then engaged us for a follow-up marketing execution plan.
Why not do this in-house?
It can feel like saving money to do research in-house with your current team, but it often ends up costing more in the long run. Internal teams are stretched across their own priorities, too close to the business to question its assumptions, and usually survey whoever is easiest to reach, which means existing customers instead of the prospects they need to win. Persona brainstorms across teams don’t have the expertise this kind of research requires, and objective research shows that synthetic data, digital twins, and simply asking AI produce low-quality, inaccurate information. In-house targeting research tends to confirm existing biases and relies on demographic data and guesses about what customers want. Companies end up making multimillion-dollar decisions across marketing, sales, product, and other departments based on the wrong information.
How long does it take?
Most projects take 4 to 6 weeks, but timelines depend on the scope and on factors like how quickly approvals and feedback come back. Your proposal will include a timeline for your project, and you’ll receive a midpoint check-in report along the way, so you see early findings before the final readout.
How much does it cost?
Projects start at $15,000 for a focused study using a single method. Full persona engagements, which combine survey and interview research with journey maps and targeting guidance, typically run $35,000 to $75,000. Costs depend on the scope of the project, such as whether post-research execution is included, the methods used, and how hard your audience is to reach. You’ll receive a detailed cost breakdown with your proposal.
Rachel Gregory Consulting is led by Rachel Gregory, Ph.D., a researcher with over a decade of experience across academic and industry research. Read more about us here.
Book a project call today.
