THE DOLL IS DATA
Marketers make voodoo dolls to learn how to control you.
Okay, not actually. But close.
A user persona is a semi-fictional profile built from real data, research, and psychology. It’s how marketers predict what people want, fear, and need. Personas aren’t about control, they’re about understanding. When done right, they help you design for humans instead of making assumptions.
Continuing our Marketing Magic series, we’ll unpack how user personas work, how they secretly power your favorite apps, and how you can build one yourself.
WHAT IS A USER PERSONA?
A user persona is a character that represents your target audience. Think of it as a carefully crafted voodoo doll stitched together from:
Demographics (age, location, career, stage of life)
Goals and motivations
Frustrations and fears
Tools or habits they already use
Personas help teams make consistent, user-focused decisions. They answer questions like:
Who am I designing for?
What problem are they trying to solve?
What emotion should this feature create?
According to the Product Marketing Alliance, effective personas are built from both qualitative and quantitative data, combining surveys, interviews, analytics, and behavioral cues into one relatable story.
EXAMPLE: THE TIFFANY TEST
When I was designing Reality Rank, my audience wasn’t “everyone who watches TV.” It was fans who rank their favorite contestants out loud.
To make that real, I built a quick persona based on Tiffany “New York” Pollard, the ultimate HBIC of reality TV:
Demographics: 43, from New York, close to her mom.
Goals: Wants to win. But more than that, to be seen.
Frustrations: Keeps getting ranked below people who don’t have her star power.
That persona helped me build features that rewarded competition, commentary, and recognition. The product stopped being for “users” and started being for people like Tiffany.
That’s the difference between making something functional and something that hits emotionally.
WHY PERSONAS MATTER
Personas keep teams aligned around why they’re building something, not just what they’re building.
Marketing uses them to shape tone and storytelling.
UX uses them to prioritize usability.
Product teams use them to map feature journeys and eliminate friction.
When personas are missing, products drift into generic “one-size-fits-none” territory.
And if you’re working on your own app or side project, a simple persona exercise can save months of misfires by forcing clarity early.
BUILD YOUR OWN: PMA TEMPLATE LIBRARY
If you want to make your own persona voodoo doll, the Product Marketing Alliance has some great free resources for members:
B2B User Persona Template (PMA) — editable worksheet with sections for goals, pain points, and buyer journey stage.
Buyer Persona Template (PMA) — simplified version focused on customer motivations and objections.
Start simple: pick one persona that reflects your main audience and write a paragraph about their goals, challenges, and the outcome they want from your product.
That’s it. You’ve built your first voodoo doll.
TAKEAWAY
Marketers don’t use real magic. They use patterns.
Every persona, every data point, every “user story” is just a different way of saying: we’re trying to understand you.
Next time you see a product that feels like it was made for you, it probably was—by a team who built your voodoo doll first.
Coming next: The Curse of the Big Button — how size, color, and friction shape your choices.