Most marketing teams have personas. The problem is, most of those personas live in a place where no one ever sees them.
They’re stored in an old SharePoint, hidden in a project folder, or sitting in a slide deck that hasn’t been opened since the day they were created. When someone asks, “Should we check our personas before we launch this?” the digital scavenger hunt begins. By the time they’re found, the team has already moved forward without them.
That’s why so many personas collect dust.
The Challenge
Creating personas is only half the job. If they aren’t used in daily decision-making, they add no real value.
When personas get sidelined, teams fall back on assumptions. Content gets created around what the team thinks the audience wants, not what the audience has actually told us. Campaigns lose relevance. Messaging feels generic. And resources get wasted creating assets that never land.
The challenge isn’t that personas don’t work. It’s that teams don’t know how to work with them.
Here’s a Smarter Next Step
Here’s a smarter next step: stop treating personas like a deliverable, and start using them as a tool.
A persona tucked away in a folder doesn’t change behavior. But a persona built into your workflow, into every content brief, planning session, and review, absolutely does.
When teams start asking:
- Which persona is this for?
- Where are they in their journey?
- What message do they need right now?
…content decisions get sharper. Priorities get clearer. And the team has a shared anchor for both strategy and execution.
That’s how personas stop collecting dust and start guiding direction.
Reflection
So here’s my question for you:
👉 Are your personas actively guiding your marketing decisions, or are they sitting unused in a folder?
