BusinessBeginnerPreview
Customer Personas & Market Segmentation
A practical, research-driven course that teaches you to segment a market the way professionals do, interview real buyers, and build personas grounded in evidence rather than invented stock photos and made-up names.
Beginners, marketers, founders, and product people who need to define who they serve and tailor messaging, with no prior research background required.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into reps you can run on a real market. Each section mirrors one course module with hands-on exercises, fill-in worksheets, and checklists you apply to a product or service you actually care about. Pick one offer and carry it through every section, and you will finish with a sized market, two or three defined segments, an interview screener and guide, at least one evidence-backed persona, a scored prioritisation matrix, and a value proposition and message tailored to your chosen segment.
Foundations: Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning
Get the STP sequence right, audit any persona you already have for fiction, and size your market with TAM, SAM, and SOM before slicing it.
Worksheet: Run Your Offer Through STP
Force yourself to separate the three jobs in order. Fill each field in sequence; do not skip ahead to positioning before you have a target.
- Offer in one sentence (what you sell and to whom)
- Segment: three or more candidate groups in this market
- Target: the single group you will serve first and why
- Position: how you want that group to perceive you versus alternatives
- Personify: a one-line description of the person inside that target you will champion
Exercise: Fiction Audit of an Existing Persona
Take any persona you, your team, or a competitor already uses (or one you can imagine being made in a workshop). Score it against the evidence standard from the course.
- List every attribute on the persona, then mark each as Demographic, Goal, Trigger, Obstacle, or Decision-criterion.
- For each attribute, write its source (interview, survey, analytics, sales notes) or write NONE.
- Count what fraction of attributes have a real source versus NONE.
- Rewrite one decorative attribute (e.g. likes yoga) as something that would actually change a buying decision.
Worksheet: Bottom-Up Market Sizing (TAM, SAM, SOM)
Estimate the opportunity from your own unit economics, not a borrowed headline. Write down every assumption so a skeptic can challenge it.
- Total potential buyers in your market (TAM count) and source of the number
- Buyers you can actually reach and serve (SAM count) and the filters that narrow TAM to SAM
- Realistic annual revenue per customer
- SAM in revenue (SAM count multiplied by revenue per customer)
- Target share of SAM in a defined period and resulting SOM in revenue
Checklist: Foundations Readiness Check
- I can state my Segment, Target, and Position separately and in that order.
- Every persona attribute I plan to keep has a real source or is flagged as a hypothesis.
- I have a bottom-up SOM in annual revenue, with assumptions written down.
- My chosen target segment is large enough in revenue to be worth pursuing.
- I have not written final positioning or messaging before deciding who I serve.
Choosing How to Slice: Segmentation Variables
Pick segmentation variables that actually change behaviour, write an Ideal Customer Profile if you sell B2B, and frame your segments as Jobs to Be Done.
Exercise: Test Your Candidate Variables
List the variables you are tempted to segment by, then put each through the does-it-change-behaviour test from the course. Keep only the ones that pass.
- List up to six candidate variables across demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioural, and firmographic families.
- For each, answer: does a different value change the customer's NEED?
- For each, answer: does it change the MESSAGE that would persuade them?
- For each, answer: does it change their WILLINGNESS TO PAY? Keep only variables that change at least one.
Worksheet: Write Your Ideal Customer Profile (B2B) or Lead Segment (B2C)
If you sell to organisations, define the firmographic filter for a fit account. If you sell to individuals, define the lead behavioural or psychographic segment instead. Fill the fields that apply.
- Industry or vertical (NAICS/SIC if known) — B2B
- Company size band by employees and annual revenue range — B2B
- Geography and language you can serve — B2B and B2C
- Relevant context or tech (e.g. already uses a CRM you integrate with) — B2B
- Lead behavioural or psychographic trait that defines the segment — B2C
Worksheet: Frame Segments as Jobs to Be Done
Write a job statement for each candidate segment in the when / want to / so I can format. Keep your product out of the sentence so it stays about the customer.
- Segment A job: when [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]
- Segment B job: when [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]
- Functional, emotional, and social dimension of the primary job
- The situation or trigger that sets off the job
Checklist: Segmentation Quality Check
- I am leading with a behavioural, psychographic, or job-based variable, not demographics alone.
- Each segment differs in need, message, or willingness to pay — not just on paper.
- I can describe each segment vividly AND find them with available data or tools.
- If B2B, I have an ICP for the account and know it is separate from the persona for the people.
- Each segment has a job statement with no product mentioned inside it.
Research: Talking to Real Buyers
Recruit the right people, run non-leading discovery and switch interviews, and validate the patterns at scale with a survey and your own analytics.
Worksheet: Interview Screener and Recruiting Plan
Define who qualifies before you recruit anyone, so you do not waste interviews on the wrong people. Decide your sources and incentive up front.
- Three to five screener questions that qualify the right buyer or user
- Target number of interviews per segment (aim five to eight) and number of segments
- Recruiting sources (recent buyers, churners, communities, panel such as User Interviews or Respondent)
- Incentive offered per interview and session length
- Definition of saturation: how you will know you can stop
Exercise: Build a Non-Leading Interview Guide
Draft questions that talk about the person's past behaviour rather than your idea, following The Mom Test and the JTBD switch-interview structure. Rewrite any leading question.
- Write an opening story prompt: tell me about the last time you faced [problem].
- Write a timeline question that finds when the old way first stopped working, and a trigger question for what finally pushed them to act that week.
- Write two anxiety questions about what nearly stopped them from switching.
- Find and rewrite one leading or hypothetical question (would you...) into a past-behaviour question.
Worksheet: Survey to Size the Patterns
After interviews, build a short survey that measures how common each pattern is. Derive answer options from the words buyers actually used.
- Survey tool (Typeform, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, Qualtrics)
- Two to four questions, each measuring one job, pain, or decision criterion
- Answer options drawn from verbatim interview language
- Defining variables included so you can cut results by segment (role, size, behaviour)
- Target sample size and distribution channel
Checklist: Research Integrity Check
- I screened participants and did not just interview friends or my happiest customers.
- I included recent switchers or churners, not only satisfied buyers.
- My questions ask about past behaviour, not predictions or opinions of my idea.
- I captured verbatim quotes with permission for use in personas and copy.
- I have a plan to size the qualitative patterns with a survey or analytics.
From Insight to Action: Personas, Prioritisation, and Messaging
Synthesise research into a sourced persona, score segments to pick a beachhead, and translate the winner into a value proposition, channel plan, and message.
Worksheet: Build One Evidence-Backed Persona
Synthesise your affinity-mapped themes into a single primary persona. Attach a source to every meaningful claim; if there is no source, mark it as a hypothesis.
- Name and one-line summary capturing the role and the job
- Core job to be done in when / want to / so I can form
- Goals and desired outcomes that define success
- Obstacles, anxieties, and objections (each with source)
- Decision criteria and trusted information sources (each with source)
- Two or three verbatim quotes, each labelled with its source
Exercise: Score and Pick Your Beachhead Segment
Use a weighted attractiveness matrix to choose objectively instead of emotionally. The companion xlsx template does the maths; use this exercise to set it up.
- List your candidate segments as the rows to score.
- Choose four to six criteria (size, growth, willingness to pay, reachability, pain intensity, fit) and assign weights summing to 100 percent.
- Score each segment 1 to 5 per criterion and let the template compute weighted totals.
- Name the highest-scoring segment as your beachhead and write one sentence on why you will win it first.
Worksheet: Translate the Persona into a Value Proposition and Message
Connect the persona's top job and pain to your offer using the Value Proposition Canvas logic, then turn it into a channel plan and a headline in their own words.
- Persona's top job and most painful obstacle
- Your pain reliever or gain creator that fits that job and pain
- One-sentence value proposition for this persona
- Channels the persona actually said they trust and use
- Headline written in the persona's verbatim language, leading with their outcome
Checklist: Activation and Maintenance Check
- Every meaningful claim on my persona has a source or is flagged as a hypothesis.
- I designated one primary persona rather than keeping too many to remember.
- I chose my target segment with a scored matrix, not a gut preference.
- My value proposition relieves a pain or creates a gain the persona actually named.
- I scheduled a persona review (every 6 to 12 months) and a way to log new evidence.
Your Action Plan
- Choose one product or service you own and will carry through the entire plan.
- Run it through STP and write a bottom-up TAM, SAM, and SOM with assumptions noted.
- List candidate segmentation variables and keep only those that change need, message, or willingness to pay.
- Write a Jobs to Be Done statement for each candidate segment, and an ICP if you sell B2B.
- Draft a screener and a non-leading interview guide, then recruit five to eight buyers per segment.
- Run the interviews, capture verbatim quotes, and stop each segment at saturation.
- Affinity-map the notes into themes and size the patterns with a short survey or your analytics.
- Synthesise the findings into one primary, fully sourced persona.
- Score your segments with the weighted attractiveness matrix and pick a beachhead.
- Write a value proposition, channel plan, and message for the beachhead persona, and schedule a persona review.
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