Most SaaS companies build buyer personas around demographics like job titles, age, and gender - then wonder why those personas collect dust. Adrienne Barnes says this broken approach leads to weak SaaS branding and content that talks about the company instead of the customer.
Adrienne is the founder of Best Buyer Persona and has built personas for companies like Monday.com and Stripe. In this episode, she breaks down a step-by-step process for creating personas that actually improve your SaaS branding, content strategy, and product decisions using the Jobs to be Done framework. If your product positioning feels off, the fix starts with talking to your customers.
SaaS positioning fails when companies use demographics instead of buying motivations. Adrienne's process interviews 20 customers across three segments - best buyers, quick churners, and average users - to build brand positioning that informs every decision.
Key Lessons
- šÆ SaaS branding fails when personas use demographics instead of jobs: Segmenting by job title, age, or gender creates personas that look nice on slides but do not inform content, product, or sales decisions. Segment by what customers are trying to accomplish.
- š§ Interview three customer segments for accurate SaaS branding: Talk to your best buyers (longest tenure or highest spend), quick churners, and average "meh" customers to get a complete picture of buying motivations and friction points.
- š¤ One customer interview per week beats no positioning research: Solo founders with 25 customers can build a complete buyer persona in four months by dedicating just one hour per week - 30 minutes interviewing, 30 minutes coding the data.
- š Never defend your product during customer discovery interviews: When customers share negative feedback, resist explaining how things are "supposed to work." Ask "tell me more about why you felt that way" instead, or you lose the most valuable insights.
- š Use relational keywords from interviews to build content strategy: The exact language customers use when describing your product is more valuable than standard SEO keywords. Combine both for content that resonates and ranks.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Adrienne's background in B2B SaaS content marketing
- What a buyer persona is and should be
- Why most buyer personas don't work
- How buyer personas help beyond just content
- Content problems when companies lack good personas
- Jobs to be Done framework for SaaS branding
- The milkshake example and going deeper
- Step one - conducting customer interviews
- Can you use surveys instead of interviews?
- When to start building personas (even with 25 customers)
- How to segment 5,000 customers for interviews
- Tips for the actual interview conversation
- Following up and staying curious
- Coding interview data into structured insights
- How many personas should you create?
- Using personas to create better content - real example
- How personas connect content across the customer journey
- Where to find Adrienne and Best Buyer Persona
Resources
