User Persona Development
Creating Negative Personas to Optimize Resource Allocation
This prompt enables teams to identify and define negative personas—audiences that are not a good fit for the product or service. By understanding these groups, teams can avoid wasting resources on non-ideal customers and focus efforts on more promising segments, improving overall efficiency and ROI.
Responsible:
Product Management
Accountable, Informed or Consulted:
Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success
THE PREP
Creating effective prompts involves tailoring them with detailed, relevant information and uploading documents that provide the best context. Prompts act as a framework to guide the response, but specificity and customization ensure the most accurate and helpful results. Use these prep tips to get the most out of this prompt:
Analyze churn and support data for common characteristics of unsatisfied users.
Review feedback and complaints from users who did not find value in your product.
Compare ideal user personas to users who failed to engage or convert.
THE PROMPT
Define negative user personas for [product/service name] by identifying audiences that are not an ideal fit for our offering. For each persona, describe:
Demographic and behavioral characteristics that indicate poor fit.
Reasons why they are unlikely to benefit from our product or service.
Challenges or costs associated with targeting these users.
Suggestions for refining our strategies to minimize engagement with these personas.
If needed, ask for more information about our target audience or product positioning to create more accurate negative personas.
Bonus Add-On Prompts
Analyze customer churn data to identify characteristics of negative personas.
Propose ways to redirect resources from negative personas to ideal user segments.
Identify communication strategies that prevent attracting non-ideal audiences.
Use AI responsibly by verifying its outputs, as it may occasionally generate inaccurate or incomplete information. Treat AI as a tool to support your decision-making, ensuring human oversight and professional judgment for critical or sensitive use cases.
SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE
Include financial metrics to estimate the cost of targeting negative personas.
Expand the scope to include market segments with conflicting values or needs.
Define negative personas by product features that are irrelevant to certain groups.
Incorporate industry benchmarks for negative personas in similar markets.
Use data from failed campaigns to identify patterns among negative audiences.
WHEN TO USE
To improve targeting and resource allocation in marketing and sales efforts.
When experiencing high churn rates or poor engagement from certain user groups.
To refine onboarding processes by excluding non-ideal users early.
WHEN NOT TO USE
If there is no historical data or feedback to identify negative personas.
When the product or service is intentionally broad and inclusive in its appeal.