Buyer Personas Versus User Personas, Part 7

What exactly are the differences between buyer and user personas?

At a Market Segmentation Forum hosted by OpenView Partners, Luke Hohmann explained. To begin, let’s say you want to sell more stuff to your current customers, which means you first need new stuff to sell. Imagine that you have a new offering for your platform. Now, take your current customer base, and figure out who would be potentially interested in your software therein.

For added clarity, look at the issue from the buyer versus user persona angle. When you’re a product company doing research about usability and satisfaction, you want to make sure you separate buyers from users. The former is looking at your company from a fiscal perspective, while the latter is only concerned with usability.

Before you can starting sell your hot new product, you must separate users from buyers.

Photo by: Hernan Pinera