A modern approach to personas: the Persona Levels framework
In our book, T2D3, Stijn and I shared our unique persona framework: the P1/P2/P3 model. Through Kalungi alone, it’s been rolled out to GTM teams at well over 200 software companies (+ many more who have DIY’d it from the book).
Recently, I’ve been socializing the concept in a new setting. It highlighted some loose ends in the source material and allowed me to refine some concepts in different, more nuanced (& sometimes more complete) ways.
This is my updated thinking.
Traditional personas (old way)
Traditional B2B marketing personas often fall short of their promise. Creating them is complicated, and you end up with overly detailed profiles built once, rarely referenced, and often forgotten.
Maybe you’ve seen these: “Suzy, a Marketing Director who drops her kids off at school at 6am, yap, yap.” They’re usually full of hyper-specific detail… but it’s goofy and rigid and you kind of your scratch your head and chuckle at it because it’s basic and doesn’t give you a foundation for doing good work.
I don’t mean to shame anyone for building these. I’ve made them, too. Most traditional marketing academia suggests this approach. But, over time, I’ve realized its limitations.
Persona Levels (new way)
“Ok, you just shat on the old way; you better have something good to replace it with,”—I do! It’s called the Persona Levels framework.
It’s simple and flexible—the Occam’s Razored version of persona development.
It promotes the idea that there are three fundamental roles on a B2B buying team:
P1: Hands-on IC users, who prioritize functionality & ease of use
P2: Team leads, who prioritize operational efficiency and team alignment.
P3: Strategic managers, who prioritize significant outcomes like ROI, scalability, and risk mitigation.
The Persona Levels framework does a few things:
It creates a single consistent language that’s shared across teams. When I say “P2,” everyone on my team knows who I’m talking about, and what level of abstraction is needed, regardless of vertical or market segment.
It doesn’t multiply exponentially with market complexity, like traditional personas. You don’t need to rebuild the wheel for every campaign; you just update relevant titles for targeting purposes and adapt messaging to fit each P1, P2, or P3 within the relevant context.
It supports a clear messaging hierarchy. P1 personas need high-level, strategic content. P2 personas respond to tactical, actionable insights. P3 personas require hands-on, practical solutions.
It works for (almost) any program—ad campaigns, content creation, ABM messaging, you name it.