Supercharge Persona Development with AI

Few tools are as foundational, or as frequently forgotten about, as personas. Over the years, I’ve led countless persona projects. Every single one has started with the best of intentions of aligning marketing and sales, sharpening focus on key decision makers, and building meaningful engagement strategies.

But too often, persona development becomes an exercise in superficial desk-bound guesswork.

That’s changing fast.

The release of Deep Research tools from OpenAI and Google has compressed what used to take hours of manual research and synthesis into minutes. With the right approach, these tools enable us to generate nuanced, data-rich personas, rooted in real-world examples, not just assumptions.

From Manual Research to Machine-Enhanced Insight

Over the past few weeks, I’ve fine-tuned a prompt and process that taps into LinkedIn profiles, job descriptions, and open-source data. The result? Robust, detailed personas that reflect not only what people do, but also how they think, what challenges they face, and how they prefer to engage.

Here's how it works:

• Start with a few LinkedIn profiles and job titles representing your target persona.
• Add details about your product, service, or brand, what you're offering and why it matters.
• Feed this into a custom-built prompt that answers over 40 key questions across themes like:
  • Personal and professional background
  • Organisational dynamics and decision-making power
  • Goals, pain points, and challenges
  • Preferred channels and buying behaviours
  • Attitudes toward innovation and change
  • A hypothesis of what your value proposition should emphasise

The output is a well-organised CSV file, ready to drop into Excel for easy formatting and review.

Great personas are not a finished product, they’re a starting point for deeper engagement. The most effective next step? Bring sales and marketing into the same room to review and refine the persona together. From there, speaking directly to real customers who match the profile uncovers the emotional drivers behind their decisions, the hidden needs that truly matter.

And once your team is aligned? AI can keep working for you.

Turning Persona into PersonaAI

By converting finalized personas into PersonaAI using CustomGPTs, OpenAI AI Assistants or Gemini Gems, teams across the organization can interact with them dynamically. Content creators can validate messaging on the fly. Sales reps can rehearse pitches. Product teams can pressure-test ideas.

All with a single goal: making sure everything you create speaks directly to the people you most want to reach.

AI isn’t replacing human insight, it’s enhancing it. By blending automation with empathy, speed with strategy, we can build personas that aren’t just informative, they’re transformative.

Want access to the Excel file and the prompt? Complete the form below so I can send it to you.