Are traditional buyer personas working in 2025? To find out, we surveyed 351 marketing leaders from Fortune 500 companies to startups, across retail, technology, and consumer goods. The reality we uncovered is stark.

While 63% of them update their customer personas every year, only 40% think these personas truly reflect their customers. This gap between effort and results spans industries and company sizes, affecting both B2B and B2C.

Such a disconnect between effort and impact shouldn’t be surprising. Most companies invest significant time and resources in buyer persona development, collecting mountains of customer data and updating their personas annually. But the approach they’re using — focusing on demographics and behavioral patterns — is flawed from the start.

To understand why, let’s look at a typical buyer persona for an FMCG company, “Health-Conscious Helen”:

  • Female, 35, married with two children
  • Household income: $120,000
  • Shops 2-3 times weekly at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s
  • 65% of purchases are organic products
  • Active on Instagram and Pinterest
  • Follows wellness influencers
  • Uses mobile apps for meal planning

Sound familiar? It should. This is exactly the kind of persona that populates the vast majority of marketing strategies. Companies spend weeks creating these buyer personas, and they tell them absolutely nothing new about their real customers.

This crisis in customer understanding comes at a pivotal time.

Customer acquisition costs are rising. Privacy regulations are increasing. Consumer behaviors are shifting rapidly. Competition is expanding. The stakes of truly knowing your target market have never been higher.

And yet, our research paints a concerning picture:

  • 77% of organizations lack the “why” behind their mountains of customer data
  • 93% say they have no way to act on all the customer data they collect
  • 74% of marketing leaders worry their teams lack the right consumer insights to be strategic partners to the business and sales teams

The problem isn’t lack of data. Companies have more data on existing customers than ever before. The problem is how they approach building marketing personas in the first place.

But before we show you how to fix these problems, we’re going to share a controversial truth:

The traditional persona development process isn’t just ineffective — it’s actively harmful. Here’s why…

Why Traditional Persona Development Falls Short

Let’s take another look at “Health-Conscious Helen.”

This appears to be a detailed buyer persona. Companies track endless data points trying to categorize these types of customers:

  • Purchasing decisions and frequency
  • Demographic details
  • Digital behaviors
  • Channel preferences
  • Product or service choices
  • Lifestyle attributes
  • Social media activity
  • Customer feedback

That’s a lot of data! Yet despite all this, we do we truly understand this customer? Yes, we can describe what Helen does, but we do not know why she does it. We can’t answer important questions like:

  • Why does she actually care about organic products?
  • What drives her wellness decisions?
  • How does she view her role in her family and community?
  • What motivates her to influence others’ health choices?

The costs of this limited understanding are significant. Companies that rely on traditionally created personas risk:

  • Product launches that miss the mark
  • Marketing efforts that fail to resonate
  • High customer acquisition costs
  • Poor retention rates
  • Missed market opportunities

Many organizations try to solve this by gathering even more behavioral data. But according to our research, 80% of marketing leaders say they’re spending too many resources keeping personas updated. And even so, still believe they’re acting on outdated information.

More data isn’t the solution. To get better ROI on our personas, we need a different approach.

The rush to collect behavioral data made sense for a while. Technology made it possible to track every click, purchase, and interaction. As a result, companies naturally focused on what they could measure. This led to increasingly sophisticated data collection but didn’t necessarily translate to deeper customer understanding.

Rethinking How We Build Personas

Want to know a key insight that will transform your persona development? Here’s what we’ve been missing while chasing more and more behavioral data: while behaviors can vary based on circumstances, psychological traits remain remarkably stable.

This isn’t just theory. Decades of psychological research have shown that core traits like decision-making styles, risk tolerance, and intrinsic motivations remain consistent throughout adulthood. Even as circumstances change, these underlying traits continue to drive behavior in predictable ways.

If you can understand these stable traits, you can then predict your customers’ behaviors instead of just describe them.

If this is a new concept to you, it’s worth unpacking.

Think of psychological traits like a river’s current, and behaviors like the boats that travel on its surface. Weather, traffic, or the skill of their captains can influence the boats’ movements (behaviors). They can change direction frequently.

But the underlying current (core psychological traits) remains consistent, steadily influencing everything that happens on the surface. Yes, a boat might temporarily move against the current. However, if you understanding that deeper flow, you can likely predict where boats will ultimately travel.

In human terms, these stable psychological traits include:

  • Core motivations (like need for control, achievement, or belonging)
  • Fundamental values
  • Information processing preferences
  • Decision-making styles
  • Risk tolerance
  • Social orientation

Life circumstances might temporarily alter how these traits express themselves, just like storms can temporarily alter a boat’s course. However, the underlying characteristics remain remarkably consistent over time. This stability makes psychological traits far more valuable for prediction than variable behavioral data alone.

Let’s take another look at Helen. Traditional analysis might show her suddenly switching from premium organic products to conventional options during an economic downturn. If we only look at behavioral data, we might conclude her values around health and wellness have changed. A traditional persona might even update to show “price sensitivity” as a new characteristic.

But if we understand her core motivation is a need for control and certainty in an unpredictable world, we see something different happening. Helen hasn’t abandoned her values; she’s expressing her need for control in a new way. Instead of controlling health through organic purchases, she’s controlling financial security through careful budgeting. She might even be spending more time researching nutrition labels and preparation methods in order to make the healthiest possible choices within her new constraints.

This is the power of understanding psychological drivers. The surface behavior changed dramatically, but the underlying motivation remained exactly the same.

This stability of psychological traits offers serious advantages. Building buyer personas will help you:

  • Predict responses to new products or features
  • Anticipate shifts in behavior under different circumstances
  • Understand which behaviors are fundamental versus situational
  • Create content and more effective marketing messages
  • Design better customer experiences
  • Provide superior customer service

A Framework for Predictive Buyer Personas

Instead of starting with behaviors and trying to infer motivation, we need to reverse the process. This is a radical departure from traditional persona development.

Previously, we would collect behavioral data and make educated guesses about underlying motivations. This approach often led to wrong assumptions and missed key insights. It’s like trying to understand why a character made a big decision by only reading the last page of a novel. Instead, we need to understand their core motivations from the beginning — then every action makes sense.

We need to flip the framework to start with stable psychological characteristics. This creates a foundation for understanding that can reliably predict behavior in any context.

Think of this framework like the architecture of understanding. Instead of starting with surface-level behaviors and trying to dig down to motivation, we build from the foundation up. The stable psychological characteristics form the roots of our understanding, and everything else grows from there.

This approach transforms our perspective from retrospective to predictive — from a rear-view mirror to a forward-looking lens. Rather than saying “Helen bought these things in the past,” we’re saying “Given Helen’s core motivations, here’s how she’s likely to approach new situations.” Here’s the three-layer framework for how to make a buyer persona in action:

1. Core Layer: Map Fundamental Identity & Motivations

Think of this as the root system of your persona — the stable, underlying drivers that influence everything above.

Key Questions to Answer:

  • What are their primary psychological drivers?
  • What deeply-held values guide their decisions?
  • What fears or anxieties influence their choices?
  • How do they view their role in the world?
  • What gives them a sense of fulfillment?

Helen’s Core Profile Example:

  • Primary Motivation: Need for control in an unpredictable world
  • Core Values: Personal responsibility, protection of family, informed decision-making
  • Key Fears: Making uninformed decisions, being misled about product safety
  • Self-Identity: Guardian of family health, informed decision-maker

Action Steps:

  • Gather psychological data through validated assessment tools
  • Look for patterns in responses across different contexts
  • Identify consistent themes in motivations and values
  • Validate findings through multiple data points
  • Document core traits that remain stable over time

2. Expression Layer: Document Decision Patterns

This is where our root-level understanding begins to take shape. Like a trunk and branches growing from strong roots, here we see how core motivations manifest in consistent patterns.

Key Questions to Answer:

  • How do they process and evaluate information?
  • What builds or breaks their trust?
  • How do they approach problem-solving?
  • What role do they take in relationships with brands?
  • How do they make decisions under pressure?

Helen’s Expression Pattern Example:

  • Systematic researcher who needs comprehensive data
  • Forms long-term loyalty based on transparency
  • Prefers preventive rather than reactive solutions
  • Values expert opinions but needs to understand reasoning
  • Takes time to make decisions but commits strongly once convinced

Action Steps:

  • Map how core motivations manifest in decision-making
  • Document typical information-seeking patterns
  • Track relationship development with brands over time
  • Note consistent problem-solving approaches
  • Identify triggers that influence decisions

3. Behavioral Layer: Connect Observable Actions

These are the visible “leaves” of our tree. They’re the observable behaviors that grow from our deeper understanding. Now we can see which behaviors are fundamental (tied directly to our roots) versus circumstantial (changing with the seasons).

Key Questions to Answer:

  • Which behaviors directly reflect core motivations?
  • Which behaviors are circumstantial?
  • What patterns emerge across different contexts?
  • How do behaviors change under stress?
  • What triggers specific actions?

Helen’s Behavioral Pattern Example:

  • Regular, planned purchasing cycles
  • Detailed product research before buying
  • Preference for brands offering transparent information
  • Strong digital engagement for information gathering
  • Influences others through detailed product knowledge sharing

Action Steps:

  • Review existing behavioral data
  • Identify which behaviors align with core traits
  • Note circumstantial versus fundamental behaviors
  • Document behavioral patterns across contexts
  • Track changes in behavior under different conditions

Using the Framework for Prediction

With all three layers mapped from roots to branches to leaves, we can now predict behavior for both existing and potential customers. For Helen, understanding her deep-rooted need for control reveals how she’ll likely respond to:

Product Development:

  • High interest in products with detailed tracking features
  • Strong appeal of customizable solutions
  • Preference for comprehensive product information
  • Attraction to preventive rather than reactive solutions

Companies using this approach typically see faster product adoption rates and fewer failed launches. This is because features are better aligned with psychological drivers.

Marketing Approach:

  • Response to detailed, fact-based communication
  • Engagement with educational content
  • Appreciation for transparency about processes
  • Skepticism of emotional appeals without substance

This deeper understanding leads to improved marketing response rates and more efficient acquisition costs since messages and channels align with core motivations.

Customer Experience:

  • Desire for control over purchase and delivery
  • Need for detailed documentation
  • Preference for self-service information access
  • Value placed on consistent communication

Organizations typically see improvements in customer lifetime value and retention rates when aligning experiences with psychological drivers.

Making It Work in Your Organization

Let’s be clear: transforming your persona development from backward-looking to predictive is a significant undertaking. It requires new capabilities, different ways of thinking, and careful change management. But organizations that successfully make this shift gain an invaluable competitive advantage: the ability to truly understand and anticipate customer behavior.

To make this transformation successful, you’ll need:

  1. Assessment Tools
  • Scalable psychological measurement methods
  • Standardized data collection processes
  • Integration with existing systems

Tools like Solsten’s Navigator are making it possible to gather psychological insights at scale. They let organizations implement this framework without the limitations of traditional research methods.

Want to learn more about the science behind psychological assessment? Read our technical overview Understanding What Really Drives Customer Behavior to see how adaptive testing produces more reliable insights than traditional research methods.

  1. Analysis Framework
  • Clear scoring methodology
  • Pattern recognition capabilities
  • Predictive modeling tools
  • Cross-contextual validation
  1. Implementation Process
  • Pilot program development
  • Validation procedures
  • Scaling methodology
  • Continuous refinement

This approach requires initial investment in one persona. However, the framework becomes more efficient as you expand across multiple buyer personas. Organizations usually find that each subsequent persona becomes easier to develop as teams become more skilled at identifying and mapping psychological drivers.

Getting Started: Your First Steps

You don’t have to transform your entire organization overnight. Start with these manageable steps:

1. Review Your Current Process (Week 1-2)

Take stock of how you create and use personas today. What’s working? What isn’t?

  • Gather your existing personas
  • Document your current data collection methods
  • List how different teams use these personas
  • Identify which decisions rely on persona insights

2. Find Your Gaps (Week 2-3)

Look for places where deeper customer understanding would make an immediate impact.

  • Review recent product or marketing decisions that missed the mark
  • Identify questions your current personas can’t answer
  • Survey teams about what customer insights they’re missing
  • Choose one high-impact area to focus on first

3. Explore Available Tools (Week 3-4)

Investigate solutions like psychological assessment tools that can help bridge these gaps.

  • Research available psychological assessment platforms
  • Evaluate integration requirements
  • Consider your data security needs
  • Assess budget and resource requirements

4. Start Small (Month 2)

Pick one persona to transform using this new approach. Think of it as a pilot program.

  • Choose a persona that impacts significant business decisions
  • Gather psychological data for this segment
  • Map insights using the three-layer framework
  • Document your process for future scaling

5. Learn and Adjust (Month 2-3)

Use what you learn from your pilot to refine your approach.

  • Track prediction accuracy
  • Gather feedback from teams using the new persona
  • Document what worked and what didn’t
  • Adjust your framework based on learnings

6. Expand What Works (Month 4+)

Once you’ve proven the value, gradually roll out the approach across more personas.

  • Share pilot results with stakeholders
  • Create a rollout timeline
  • Train teams on the new approach
  • Set success metrics for broader implementation

A typical organization can complete the first four steps within 6-8 weeks. Full implementation across multiple personas will take 3-4 months. Resource requirements are typically 1-2 team members part-time for the pilot.

The future of persona development does not lie in gathering more behavioral data. What matters is understanding the psychological drivers that make your customers who they are. Organizations that master this approach will create deeper customer connections, develop more successful products, and achieve better marketing outcomes.

The competitive advantage goes to those who move first. The question isn’t whether to make this shift. It’s how quickly you can implement it to gain advantage in understanding and serving your customers.