The path
1
1. Pick the right brief
Customer profile brief for B2B. B2C customer profiles for consumer. They ask different questions because the buying situations differ.
2
2. Fill it in
Work through the brief. The part most often skipped is the insight: what this person currently believes, doubts, or has been burned by. A description places someone in a bucket. An insight gives a writer something to push against.
3
3. Name it
Use customer profile naming conventions. The name is what every brief and audience export will refer to, so it has to be stable.
4
4. Save it to the library
File the finished profile in the customer profile library. This is the step that makes it reusable. A profile living in one campaign brief gets rewritten slightly differently in the next.
5
5. Export to the platforms you'll target
Build the audience file from the matching template: Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok. For account-based targeting on LinkedIn, use the company list template.Name the exported file with file naming conventions so the version in the platform can be traced back to the profile.
6
6. Reference it, don't repeat it
From now on, briefs name the profile and link to the library entry. See the customer profile section of the marketing campaign brief and the copy brief.
What links to a profile
Keeping profiles honest
A profile written from assumption reads exactly like one written from research. Record where each claim came from as you fill it in, the same way positioning records evidence for its reasons to believe. Set a review date, because the profile that was accurate at launch describes a different buyer two years later.Related resources
- Customer profile brief The B2B workbook.
- B2C customer profiles The consumer workbook.
- Customer profile library Where finished profiles live.
- Customer profile naming conventions The naming pattern for step 3.
- Make a campaign Where a profile gets used.