Defining the buyer persona

The 2019 slide deck documented Ivaylo Kunev’s Coworking Europe session on defining buyer personas as part of a content marketing strategy. It argued that content required a strategy and then framed purchasing decisions around trigger events and needs to accomplish, fix or avoid something. The deck described a buying-concept process that moved through understanding cognition, generating alternatives through divergent thinking, and selecting the best option through convergent thinking. It also used the AIDA model to relate attention to a cognitive stage, interest and desire to an affective stage, and action to a behavioural stage.

The workshop portion asked participants to identify target customers, including freelancers, start-ups and corporations, and narrow the list to five groups. A sample customer-avatar worksheet showed the categories used to develop a persona: goals and values, demographic and professional details, information sources, challenges and pain points, objections, and the person’s role in the purchase process. A final photograph of handwritten workshop notes showed participants applying these categories to coworking audiences and considering content channels and formats.

Key findings

• The buying-concept process moved from understanding cognition to generating divergent options and selecting the best through convergent thinking.
• The AIDA model linked attention to cognition, interest and desire to the affective stage, and action to behaviour.
• The customer-avatar template covered goals, values, information sources, pain points, objections and the buyer’s role in purchasing.

Presented by Ivaylo Kunev, Worky Coworking & Coffee, at Coworking Europe 2019