Buyer Persona Questions: 60 Killer Questions to Ask

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer, to whom you would like to sell your products and services. It’s sometimes referred to as a customer persona or a user persona.

The buyer persona contains key information about your target audience, including:

• Age, gender, location, and family status
• Job and place of employment
• Buying preferences
• Goals and pain points
• Marketing channels they use

You can also include a name, photo, and quote to make the person in your buyer persona more relatable.

How many buyer personas should you create?

As many as you need. You’ll likely cater to a large target audience that you can break down into multiple audience segments. You can create a detailed buyer persona for each specific segment.

For example, let’s say you’re an accountant. You may want to target different types of customers, including:

• Freelancers and sole traders
• Small business owners
• Finance managers in medium-sized businesses

Creating buyer personas for each target customer means you can create bespoke marketing campaigns that appeal to the right people.

You can also create negative personas, which we’ll talk about in more detail later.

Why is it important to create buyer personas?

Buyer personas tell you everything you need to know about your ideal customers in a single handy document.

Here are 3 reasons why they’re essential for good customer engagement.

Helps you understand your customers

When you show customers that you’re genuine, trustworthy, and understand their personal preferences, they’re more likely to stay loyal to your business.

A buyer persona provides a holistic understanding of your target audience, meaning you can build and nurture a beneficial working relationship.

Makes marketing more effective

You can use buyer personas to understand which marketing channels your target audience prefers, and which type of marketing messages persuade them to buy. This lets you focus your time, money, and resources on the marketing that encourages users to interact and convert.

You can also create negative buyer personas, or anti-personas. These represent the people who aren’t a good fit for your product or service, so you can make sure your marketing efforts don’t target them.

Aligns your Marketing and Sales teams

Consistency is vital when working with customers. No matter whether a customer engages with Marketing or Sales, you want to convey the same message each time.

A buyer persona provides your Marketing team and Sales team with all the information needed to ensure clear, uniform communication, no matter where customers are in the marketing funnel.

You can also share your buyer persona with third-party organizations like marketing agencies so that their marketing efforts align with yours.

How to gather actionable insights

The key to a successful buyer persona is to use relevant, real data from actual customers.

Building a buyer persona based on thoughts and assumptions can lead to an inaccurate profile, which can lead to you targeting the wrong customers.

Here are some of the best ways to get the information you need.

Buyer persona interviews

A buyer persona interview is when you conduct a one-on-one interview with a potential or existing customer. You can also talk to churned customers or people who didn’t buy from you to get a deeper understanding of the weak spots in your marketing.

You can carry out this interview face-to-face, over the phone, or by using videoconferencing software.

The advantage of conducting buyer persona interviews is that you can ask follow-up questions and explore the why behind your customers’ answers and their buying process.

Surveys and questionnaires

You can identify which types of questions you want to ask your target audience and send them a survey or questionnaire. You can ask them to complete it by email, over social media, or even use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to target suitable respondents.

With surveys, it’s essential to ask a mix of quantitative (close-ended) and qualitative (open-ended) questions. Quantitative data can help reveal general trends and patterns, while qualitative data can provide a deeper understanding of your customers.

Surveys and questionnaires are more cost-effective and easier to roll out than persona interviews. However, the data you receive may not be as detailed or nuanced.

Brand monitoring

Brand monitoring is when you proactively search for mentions of your brand, product, or service across your marketing channels, including on social media platforms, websites, and blogs. You can then use the data to develop persona insights.

The benefit of brand monitoring is that you can discover new audiences and uncover pain points on channels you never considered. However, good brand monitoring can be resource intensive—many businesses opt to invest in brand monitoring analytics tools.

60 questions to ask to build buyer personas

Creating a high-quality buyer persona starts with asking the right questions.

You want to determine your target audience’s goals and motivations, as well as what factors influence them to buy.

Here are 60 buyer persona questions that will help you understand your customer base.

Remember that the questions you ask your customers will depend on what you sell and who you’re selling it to. For example, if you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) business, you probably won’t need your customer to go into detail about their occupation.

Demographic questions

Demographic questions allow you to find out basic information about your customers, including their age, marital status, and career.

These questions provide a snapshot of who your customers are and can help you market to their specific audience group. You can also use this data to customize any additional questions you ask.

For example, if your customer advises that they have a pet dog, you can gather information about the brand of dog food they purchase and the store they buy it from.

Here are 15 demographic questions to ask your customers:

1. What is your age?
2. What is your gender identity?
3. What is your marital status?
4. Do you own or rent your home?
5. How many people over the age of 18 live in your home?
6. Do you have children? If so, how many and what are their ages?
7. Do you have pets? If so, what type and how many?
8. What is your educational background?
9. What is your annual household income level?
10. What is your job title?
11. What industry do you work in?
12. What size company do you work for?
13. What is your level of seniority in your role?
14. What are your main responsibilities at work?
15. What is the size of the team you work with?

Geographic questions

Geographic questions explore where your customers live and work, and the amenities available to them.

You can get basic geographic information about your customers using analytics tools. For example, Google Analytics will provide a rough estimation of where your web visitors are, based on their IP address.

However, asking customers specific questions about their location will provide you with more comprehensive insights. For example, if you sell clothing, asking what the weather is like will help you understand customer shopping preferences and which items you should promote.

Here are 15 geographic questions to ask your customers:

1. Which country do you live in?
2. Which city or region do you live in?
3. Do you live in an urban, suburban, or rural area?
4. How long have you lived in your current location?
5. Where did you live before you moved to your current location?
6. Do you plan to move in the near future?
7. Do you commute to work? If so, how far and how often?
8. Where are your company’s offices located?
9. What is your primary mode of transport?
10. What is the climate like where you live?
11. Do you frequently travel outside of your region?
12. Do you have access to 5G/high-speed internet?
13. Which languages are most common where you live?
14. Do you regularly participate in any local events?
15. Based on your location, is it easier to shop online or in physical stores?

Psychographic questions

Psychographic questions provide detailed insights about your customers’ personal lives, interests, values, and personality.

You can also ask questions about pain points—specific problems customers have that your service or product can potentially solve.

These questions help you understand how your customers think and feel, providing you with valuable information you can use to create content marketing that appeals to your target audience.

Here are 15 psychographic questions to ask your customers:

1. What are your personal goals?
2. What are your professional goals?
3. How do you define success?
4. What personality traits best define you?
5. Which causes and social issues do you most care about?
6. What are your hobbies and interests outside of work?
7. What are your political and religious views? (This may be a contentious question, so only ask if it’s relevant to your business.)
8. What are your biggest frustrations and challenges in life?
9. How do you make important life decisions?
10. How do you spend your leisure time?
11. Which social media channels do you use most?
12. What kind of content do you consume? (For example, books, videos, and podcasts.)
13. Which websites do you visit the most?
14. Which brands do you admire the most and why?
15. Which role models and public figures inspire you?

Behavioral questions

Behavioral questions tell you about your customers’ buying behavior, including what they look for when buying a service or product, their communication preferences, and what will cause them to disengage from a brand.

These questions help you refine your marketing strategies to create a personalized experience and ensure you offer the right products and services.

You can also use this information to improve the user experience on your website. For example, if a customer prefers to buy products quickly, you can implement a guest or one-click checkout to save time.

Here are 15 behavioral questions to ask your customers:

1. How often do you buy products and services online?
2. What devices (for example, smartphones, smart home devices) do you use to browse and buy online?
3. What day and time do you prefer to browse and shop online?
4. How do you typically discover new products and services?
5. How do you typically research products and services before you buy?
6. Do you prefer to buy from new brands or stick to brands you know and trust?
7. Which factors most influence your purchasing decisions?
8. What was the last product you bought online? Why did you buy it?
9. Do discounts and special offers influence your purchasing decisions?
10. Given the choice, would you rather buy a subscription or a one-off purchase?
11. Who else is involved in your decision-making process?
12. What is your preferred payment method when buying online?
13. What makes you stay loyal to a business?
14. What would make you recommend a business to other people?
15. What would make you stop buying from a business?