Or: Why Imaginary People Aren’t Buying Your Product
There was a time when I believed I knew my ideal dinner guest. She was named Claire. Claire was 34, worked in UX design, did yoga on Wednesdays, and enjoyed books about Scandinavian parenting philosophies. Claire drank wine (white, organic), followed NPR on Instagram, and once shared an article about the benefits of cold plunges.
She also didn’t exist.
That didn’t stop me from planning an entire party around her.
Which is exactly what most businesses do when they build buyer personas.
They craft fictional profiles with imaginary hobbies and motivational quotes, then use them as the foundation for multi-million dollar go-to-market strategies. And when those campaigns flop? They wonder why Claire never RSVPed.
The Persona Problem (and Why Claire Isn’t Returning Your Emails)
Let me be clear: personas aren’t evil. They’re not the villain in this story. They’re just… a little outdated. Like using a Blackberry in 2025 or quoting Malcolm Gladwell in a boardroom and expecting people to be impressed.
Personas are great at telling you who your buyer might be. What they’re less great at is telling you:
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When they’re ready to buy
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What they’re struggling with right now
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Why they ghosted your sales team after watching that entire case study video you made with dramatic music
That’s where buyer behavior enters the chat.
Buyer Behavior: Actual People Doing Actual Things
Unlike personas, which are crafted in brainstorming sessions over snacks, buyer behavior is observable. It’s real. It doesn’t wear metaphorical glasses or have suspiciously curated goals like “grow professionally while optimizing team collaboration.”
Behavior tells you:
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What someone clicked
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How long they stayed
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What content they consumed (or ignored)
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When they took action—and what came right before
It’s the difference between guessing someone likes pizza because they’re from New York and seeing them order two slices of pepperoni and a garlic knot at 2:37 p.m.
Welcome to the Era of Buyer-Centric Strategy
Gone are the days of spray-and-pray messaging and quarterly campaign calendars built around your fiscal year instead of your buyer’s actual needs.
A buyer-centric strategy says:
“Let’s stop talking about ourselves for five seconds and pay attention to what the buyer is doing.”
This means:
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Trigger-based outreach instead of timed nurture emails that feel like forgotten homework
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Sales plays triggered by behavior, not rep intuition
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Content journeys personalized to how a buyer engages, not which fictional stage of the funnel they’re assigned to by your CRM
It’s modern empathy with a hint of software.
Personas Aren’t Dead. They Just Need Adult Supervision.
Before you light your persona documents on fire and start fresh with browser tracking and intent signals, let’s take a breath.
Personas still matter. They’re the context. The backdrop. The scaffolding.
But alone, they’re just cardboard cutouts of your buyer. What brings them to life is behavior.
It’s not persona vs. behavior—it’s persona + behavior that makes your strategy actually work.
Example?
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Persona says: “Taylor is a mid-level IT decision-maker.”
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Behavior says: “Taylor just read 3 articles on security compliance and visited your pricing page.”
Now you know not just who Taylor is, but what Taylor is thinking. That’s the secret to relevance. That’s buyer-centricity.
How BCOS Helps You Make the Shift (Without Losing Your Mind or Your MQLs)
Enter the Buyer-Centric Operating System—or BCOS, which sounds like an AI boy band but is actually a very serious and very useful framework.
BCOS helps you:
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Combine buyer personas and real behavior into actionable insights
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Align your marketing, sales, and product teams around real buyer signals
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Build content, sales plays, and GTM strategy rooted in actual human behavior (and not just Claire’s fake morning routine)
It replaces assumptions with rituals, siloed decks with shared artifacts, and campaign planning with strategic conversations about what buyers need right now.
Think of it as therapy for your go-to-market dysfunction. With diagrams.
Practical Steps to Join the Buyer-Centric Club
Feeling inspired? Here’s how to get started without triggering a company-wide panic:
1. Audit Your Personas
Are they based on data? Or did someone make them up after one customer interview and a kombucha?
2. Layer in Behavioral Insights
Use tools that track actual buyer actions—website behavior, engagement signals, CRM movement.
3. Create Trigger-Based Playbooks
What do you do when a buyer reads a pricing page? Or downloads a whitepaper? (Hint: not “send another webinar invite.”)
4. Align Teams Around Buyer Context
Make your personas and behavior insights visible—really visible. Not “shared in a Notion doc no one opens” visible.
Conclusion: Claire Is Tired of Being Your Scapegoat
If you’ve ever said, “Well, our persona says they care about X,” while real buyers are off Googling Y, you’re not alone. You’re just living in the before-times.
Today, it’s not enough to guess who your buyer is. You have to know what they’re doing—and what they need—right now.
That’s the difference between persona theater and buyer-centric strategy.
So maybe keep Claire around. But let her be your starting point, not your GPS.
And if you need help making the leap?
👉 Insivia Can Help You Go From Guessing to Knowing
At Insivia, we help you build strategies rooted in real buyer behavior—not just static personas from 2017. Through our Buyer-Centric Operating System, we’ll help your teams align around what actually matters: relevance, timing, and buyer needs.
📩 Reach out to us and we’ll show you how to move from fictional profiles to frictionless buying experiences.
Claire would approve.
Written by: Andy Halko, CEO & Founder
I started Insivia in 2002 and for over 22 years I have had the chance to work directly with hundreds of companies and founders to redefine or reinvent their businesses.