Customer persona builder with empathy map and journey

# Customer Persona: "Growth-Stage Grace" **Product:** FormFlow — AI-powered form builder for lead capture --- ## 1. Demographics & Firmographics | Attribute | Detail | |-----------|--------| | **Name** | Grace Chen | | **Age** | 32 | | **Title** | Head of Growth | | **Company** | Series B SaaS (employee scheduling software) | | **Company size** | 140 employees | | **Reports to** | VP of Marketing | | **Team** | 4 direct reports (2 growth marketers, 1 content, 1 designer) | | **Salary** | $145K + equity | | **Location** | San Francisco (works hybrid, 2 days in office) | | **Education** | MBA from a top-20 school, undergrad in economics | | **Career path** | Consultant → PM at early-stage startup → Growth lead → Head of Growth | --- ## 2. Psychographic Profile **Values:** - Data-driven decision making (won't launch anything without a hypothesis) - Speed over perfection ("ship it and iterate") - Team empowerment (hates micromanagement, delegates aggressively) - Transparency (shares all dashboards openly with the team) **Fears:** - Missing quarterly targets and having to explain it to the board - Being seen as "just marketing" instead of a growth driver - Competitor outpacing them on acquisition efficiency - Making a tool decision that wastes her team's time for months **Aspirations:** - Become VP of Marketing within 2 years - Build a growth engine that works without her constant oversight - Be known in the SaaS community as a thought leader - Achieve predictable, scalable lead generation (not feast-or-famine) **Information diet:** - Reads: Lenny's Newsletter, First Round Review, Kyle Poyar's Growth Unhinged - Listens: "The Growth Equation" podcast, "SaaS Open Mic" - Social: Very active on LinkedIn (posts 2x/week), lurks on Twitter/X - Communities: Pavilion (Revenue Collective), Demand Curve Slack --- ## 3. Empathy Map ### Thinks - "Our CAC is climbing and I need to fix the middle of the funnel before it becomes a board-level conversation" - "There has to be a better way to capture leads than this Typeform we've been using since Series A" - "I wonder how much revenue we're leaving on the table with our current form abandonment rate" - "I don't have engineering bandwidth to build a custom solution right now" ### Feels - **Pressure:** Quarterly targets are aggressive and she's behind by 15% - **Frustration:** She knows the forms are a problem but can't quantify the impact easily - **Excitement:** When she finds a tool that could give her team leverage without more headcount - **Skepticism:** She's been burned by "AI-powered" tools that were just wrappers around basic logic ### Says - "Show me the data. What's the actual lift?" - "How long will integration take? I can't afford a 3-month migration." - "Will this work with HubSpot? That's non-negotiable." - "Can I run a pilot on one form before committing?" ### Does - Checks dashboards first thing every morning (HubSpot, Mixpanel, Google Analytics) - Runs weekly growth meetings where she reviews funnel metrics with her team - Tests 2-3 new tools per quarter (always starts with free tier) - Asks peers in Pavilion Slack for tool recommendations before googling - Writes LinkedIn posts about growth experiments she's running --- ## 4. Day-in-the-Life Narrative **7:00am** — Wakes up, checks Slack for overnight messages. Sees that yesterday's webinar drove 340 registrations. Smiles. Opens HubSpot to check how many actually attended (142 — about right). **8:30am** — Arrives at office. Opens her "Growth Dashboard" in Mixpanel. Notices the website-to-trial conversion rate dropped from 4.2% to 3.8% this week. Makes a mental note to investigate. **9:00am** — Weekly growth team standup. Her demand gen lead mentions the lead capture form on the pricing page has a 28% completion rate. Grace says "that's terrible — what's the benchmark?" Nobody knows. She assigns someone to research it. **10:30am** — Deep work block. Reviews the Q2 growth plan. They need 400 qualified leads/month to hit target. Currently at 310. The gap is 90 leads. She thinks: "If I could just get our form completion rate from 28% to 50%, that would close the gap without any new spend." **12:00pm** — Lunch. Scrolls LinkedIn. Sees a post from a peer about switching form tools and getting a "3x completion lift." Likes it. Makes a mental note. Opens the product's website on her phone. **2:00pm** — Calls with sales team. They complain that lead quality has dropped. Grace suspects it's because the form asks for "company size" and "budget" upfront, scaring away early-stage prospects. She thinks: "What if we could show different questions to different people?" **4:30pm** — Finally has 30 minutes to evaluate the form tool from lunch. Signs up for free. Creates a test form in 4 minutes. Impressed by the AI adaptation feature. Shares the link with her demand gen lead: "Try this and tell me what you think." **6:30pm** — Home. Her demand gen lead Slacks back: "This is really good. The per-question analytics alone would save us hours." Grace replies: "Let's run a pilot next week." --- ## 5. Buying Journey ### Stage 1: Problem Awareness (2-4 weeks) **Trigger:** Misses a monthly lead target. Investigates the funnel and discovers form abandonment is a major leak. **Behavior:** Searches "average form completion rate" and "how to reduce form abandonment." Reads 3-4 blog posts. **Content that helps:** Blog posts about form optimization benchmarks, infographics with industry data. ### Stage 2: Solution Exploration (1-2 weeks) **Trigger:** Realizes she needs a better form tool, not just better form design. **Behavior:** Asks peers in Pavilion Slack for recommendations. Reads G2 reviews for Typeform alternatives. Googles "[product] vs Typeform." **Content that helps:** Comparison pages, G2/Capterra reviews, peer recommendations. ### Stage 3: Evaluation (1 week) **Trigger:** Signs up for 2-3 free tools. Runs a side-by-side test. **Behavior:** Creates one form in each tool. Sends to her team for feedback. Checks HubSpot integration. Asks about pricing for her team size. **Content that helps:** Integration docs, pricing page clarity, case study from similar company. ### Stage 4: Decision (2-3 days) **Trigger:** One tool shows measurably better results in the pilot. **Behavior:** Writes a quick business case for her VP (cost, expected lift, migration time). Gets approval. Starts annual plan. **Content that helps:** ROI calculator, customer stories with concrete numbers, easy annual pricing comparison. --- ## 6. Objections and Responses | Objection | Response | |-----------|----------| | "AI is just a buzzword" | "Here's the actual model architecture. It analyzes scroll speed, hesitation time, and device type to predict which questions to show. Here are the results from 47 beta companies." | | "We just redesigned our forms" | "FormFlow is a layer on top of design. Keep your branding, add intelligence. A/B test both versions." | | "I don't have time to migrate" | "Import your existing Typeform in one click. Average setup: 4 minutes." | | "How do I justify the cost?" | "If your form completion goes from 28% to 50%, that's 79 more leads/month. At your $43 CAC, that's $3,400/month in saved ad spend." | --- ## 7. The "Aha Moment" **The exact moment Grace converts:** She creates a test form with FormFlow, publishes it alongside her existing Typeform, and splits traffic 50/50 for one week. Results: - Typeform: 28% completion rate - FormFlow: 61% completion rate She screenshots the dashboard, posts it in her team Slack with the message "I think we found our new form tool," and starts the annual plan that afternoon. **The aha moment isn't a feature demo. It's seeing her own data prove the difference.**