The 40 Best Buyer Persona Questions I Would Ask During Customer Interviews

Good marketing is always about the customers, period. This is the most important lesson I have learned from all my successes and failures as a marketer.

To launch successful marketing campaigns, you need to know every detail about your target audience – their goals, aspirations, pain points, and more. And building buyer personas is a good place to start.

I brainstormed with the team and put together 40 buyer persona interview questions to survey your audience and create accurate personas.

Once you have the data, use ours Free buyer persona template to share your insights with the rest of your company.

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Why conduct buyer persona interviews?

A Buyer persona (or user persona) is a fictional representation of your target customer. It essentially gives you an overview of your buyers’ preferences, pain points, motivations, and more.

But even if buyer personas are fictional, you need real data on which each persona can be based. It must accurately reflect your customers’ real needs and wants. This is where buyer persona interviews and surveys help you collect data to design these personas.

I use buyer persona surveys and questionnaires to assess the needs of my target group.

My ideal starting point is to select a sample group from my customer base. I then share the survey with these participants to fully understand their goals, challenges, tasks to be completed, and more.

If you don’t have the resources to conduct a survey, I recommend using a market research platform like Qualtrics to conduct panels and interviews with your selected participants.

Once you’ve decided who you want to survey, you can select specific questions to collect data on:

• Demographic data such as age, education, occupation and income.
• Psychographic characteristics such as their habits, beliefs, behaviors and preferences (e.g. shopping preferences).

This information can benefit businesses and brands looking to convert leads, personalize the customer experience, and improve their bottom line.

Here’s a buyer persona example to show how it works. I created this using HubSpot’s free program Make my persona Tool.

3 Key Benefits of User Persona Surveys and Interviews

Buyer personas take the guesswork out of your marketing strategy. These personas tell you the exact problems and desires of your target group.

This allows you to make data-driven decisions and launch campaigns tailored to your customers’ preferences. I rely heavily on buyer persona surveys to take the pulse of my audience and design accurate personas.

Here are some benefits I’ve experienced from asking the right persona questions.

1. I captured more high-quality leads.

By understanding your customers’ typical challenges and needs, you can create campaigns that truly speak to them. By discovering your By using persona interviews to identify your audience’s habits and challenges, you can tailor your sales and marketing campaigns to the users most likely to buy from you.

2. I personalized the customer experience.

Personalizing the customer experience is one of the best ways to stay top of mind with potential customers and win their business.

Customers are more likely to buy from you if they feel like you are speaking directly to them. Persona interviews allow you to get to know them better and identify their concerns. This makes it easier to create personalized messages and connect with them on a deeper level.

3. I improved my bottom line.

Buyer personas can significantly improve your bottom line by maximizing lead generation and increasing conversions. These personas will also inform your strategy for delivering a positive and targeted customer experience.

The result? Higher customer retention and brand loyalty.

Pro tip: Develop a targeted content marketing strategy to generate interest in your brand in the top of the funnel. Check out the free one Content marketing training resources Join HubSpot Academy to develop your content strategy today.

Buyer personality questions

1. What educational background do you have?
2. What industry does your company operate in?
3. How big is your company in terms of sales and number of employees?
4. What is your job title and how long have you been in this position?
5. How does your team or company define the success of such purchases?
6. Where do you typically find information to help you make purchasing decisions?
7. Why do you trust a brand enough to buy from them?
8. How important is it that a company aligns with your values?
9. What are the biggest challenges or pain points you face in your role?
10. What tools or technologies are you currently using? Are there limitations affecting your performance?

Download our free buyer persona template here to learn how to create buyer personas for your business.

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Questions about your personal background

Knowing your buyers’ background gives you important insight into their interests, upbringing, communication style, and other preferences.

In my experience, understanding personal background gives you the much-needed cultural context to positively influence your target buyers.

This is your opportunity to ask interview questions about the buyer related to their education and work experience, demographics, and personal interests.

Here are some questions I ask about buyers’ personal interests:

1. What educational background do you have?
2. Share how your career path led you to your current position.
3. Where are you? What influence does this have on your work?
4. What is your preferred communication style?

Questions about your company

I always collect information about the company where my target buyers work.

This may include data about company size, business goals and challenges. This data provides me with specific insights to tailor my communications to each buyer based on their work environment.

Additionally, if you know the necessary details about your persona’s company, such as: For example, the number of employees, you can quickly outline the fields for your landing page forms.

Here are some questions I ask about the buyer’s company:

5. What industry does your company operate in?
6. How big is your company in terms of sales and number of employees?
7. What are the main goals your company wants to achieve this year?
8. What are the biggest challenges for your company in the current market?

Questions about their role

The importance of your buyer persona’s purpose depends on the product or service you are selling.

If you’re a B2C company, consider this information as simply another way to better understand the nuances of your persona’s life.

If you are a B2B company, this information becomes even more important. Think about the many moving parts of being a B2B buyer: Do your personas operate at a manager or director level and are they intimately familiar with the intricacies of this industry?

Experienced buyers require less training than someone at the entry level, who may need to involve other decision makers before making purchasing decisions.

Here are some questions I ask about buyer roles:

9. What is your job title and how long have you been in this position?
10. What are your main tasks?
11. What does a typical day look like in this role?
12. What knowledge and tools do you use in your work?
13. What are the biggest challenges you face in your everyday work?

Pro tip: Try to phrase these persona interview questions as narrowly as possible. This leads to more objectivity in your buyer personas and allows you to provide specific data points about the role of each persona.

Questions about buyer goals

Identifying buyer goals and motivations is important for defining concrete outcomes for your messaging. I use this data to identify the key benefits to highlight for each type of buyer.

You should know what success looks like for your buyers. By understanding their expectations of success, you can position your product/service as a more relevant offering. Additionally, knowing how buyers measure success will help you demonstrate the specific value they are looking for.

Here are some questions I ask about buyers’ goals:

14. What are your main goals when considering a product or service like ours?
15. How does your team or company define the success of such purchases?
16. What would make you a champion of the product internally?
17. Are there any specific KPIs you need to meet with this purchase?
18. How do you specifically measure success in your role?

Questions about how buyers learn

If you want to market and sell these personas, you need to understand how they consume information.

I usually start by gathering information about upskilling required in the workplace. You can also explore their favorite learning formats, such as detailed reports, blog posts, short videos, and podcasts. Ask relevant questions to identify their trusted learning sources, whether they are industry experts or research platforms.

Your goal should be to fully understand their learning style. Here are some questions I ask buyers about the buying process:

19. What type of content or resources do you prefer to learn more about a concept?
20. Where do you typically find information to help you make purchasing decisions?
21. What publications and thought leaders do you follow for industry insight?
22. Do you attend industry events or conferences to learn?
23. Which communities and social networks are you involved in?

Pro tip: I recommend conducting independent research to find out how your target buyers learn before formulating these questions. You can identify and explore the most popular resources and communities for your buyers. This allows you to skip the obvious questions and focus on gathering more meaningful information.

Questions about their shopping preferences

You should understand your buyers’ evaluation process when making a purchase.

Before you buy a product, you need to look behind the scenes and look at its analysis. Ask about the avenues they use to find information, such as online searches, review sites, network referrals, and more.

If you can anticipate your persona’s objections, you can be prepared for them in the sales process. You can also educate them about your marketing materials to immediately allay fears.

Here are some questions I ask about buyers’ shopping preferences:

24. Describe a recent purchase from start to finish.
25. How do you typically find, research and evaluate vendors or products?
26. Which factors are most important when making a purchase decision?
27. How do you prefer to interact with potential vendors?
28. Why do you trust a brand enough to buy from them?

Questions about values

Your buyers’ values ​​are central to purchasing decisions. You can stand out among sellers by expressing your commitment to the core values ​​your buyers believe in. I have observed that this alignment of values ​​can also win the trust of buyers and build loyalty in the long term.

Here are some questions I ask about buyer values:

29. What values ​​or ethics guide your purchasing decisions?
30. What would make you loyal to a brand in the long term?
31. How important is it that a company aligns with your values?
32. Are there social or environmental aspects that you prioritize when selecting products?

Questions about pain and challenges

Buyer pain points are a crucial part of your personas. By understanding their problems and challenges, you can offer specific solutions that will resonate with them. It makes your pitch unique and shows that you’ve done your homework.

It’s also good to understand what solutions they’ve tried in the past but didn’t work. You can empathize with them and present your offer as a better alternative to eliminate any frustrations.

Here are some questions I ask about buyers’ pain points:

33. What are the biggest challenges or pain points you face in your role?
34. How do these challenges impact your ability to achieve your goals?
35. Have you tried solutions in the past that didn’t work? What were they missing?
36. What would solving these challenges mean for your company or role?

Questions about their surroundings

A buyer’s environment typically includes their work structure and the industry in which they operate.

Knowing these details will make it easier for you to understand their priorities and fit your offer into their preferred context. For example, remote workers will focus on better collaboration, while on-site workers may need better equipment.

I always include some of these persona interview questions to understand market trends and changes in my buyers’ environment.

Here are some questions I ask about the buyer’s environment:

37. How does your work environment affect your purchasing decisions?
38. How does your company adapt to changes in the market or industry?
39. Are there market trends or external factors influencing your company’s strategy?
40. What tools or technologies are you currently using? Are there limitations affecting your performance?

Choose the right buyer persona interview questions.

By creating buyer personas, you can develop a customer-centric marketing strategy and tailor your messaging to their goals and desires. I use buyer personas to lay the foundation for every campaign I launch.

After creating dozens of buyer persona surveys and interviews, I handpicked these buyer persona interview questions. Use this to survey a small sample of your target audience and collect important data to define your buyer personas.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for completeness.