The Science Behind Creating Buyer Personas infographic from WSI does a good job explaining why personas are way more than just demographic information. Too many companies don't dig deep enough when creating buyer personas to really understand their customers' decision making process.
A buyer persona can be one of the most powerful tools in helping you devise effective marketing strategies.
Wikipedia defines a buyer persona as “fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.”
The process and resulting personas are particularly useful for businesses who recognize the value of content-marketing. The secret of content marketing is hiding in plain site: if you want your business to be found by prospective clients, referred by existing clients, lauded by critics, you need to start by creating great content that they will want to read.
Personas are a great foundation to identify the topics that are of interest, and the voice you should use to communicate them.
This infographic is a fun way of looking at how to go about this process. It isn’t easy, but it is extraordinarily valuable!
Sometimes infographics tell stories about concepts or processes instead of large data sets or statistics. This one uses icons and illustrations to help marketers understand how complicated building buyer personas can be.
Oddly, the infographic appears to be hosted on the MarketingProfs website instead of WSI. I couldn't find an original infographic landing page from WSI.