I couldn't find a marketing forum so in here it goes as e-commerce is my thing.
First: This isn't really about what are personas or any long marketing post. I paid a company to do this when I was on my ass.. not everyone has access to the funds required to do this kind of work so using what I learnt during the entire process this is how I would do it with AI. Id take the AI personas with a little grace it's a good starting off point but if got access your own large pool of customers go off what you have and confirm what these personas are saying, dont be afraid to speak and ask questions from your customers and audience.
Not many people bother to set up buying personas or profiles as traditionally it's rather expensive. I went about this task just after covid while resetrucring the business after a million pound loss of sales revenue but that's another story. I hired an agency to help create ours but having done it and with the advancements of AI I wish I read a book and done it our selfs.
So for all of you who have an e-commerce store or any kind of business and you want to expand and grow your marketing but have no budget OR if you are like me you like to work on shoe strings because that's when you become the most creative ... strap in.
Let's be lazy for a moment and use google AI Overview
What is a customer persona
A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your target audience, based on research and data about their demographics, behaviors, motivations, and goals. It helps marketers and businesses understand their customers better, enabling them to tailor messaging, product development, and customer experiences.
What's great about these it allows you to really think who your customer is and your audience and gives you ideas on how to communicate with them and speak to them.
BEFORE we go further. IF you have a big pool of customers then by all means go and ask them questions send them a questionnaire to fill in and gather real data and use this to compare to the fictional personas you created and see if they align.
So no budget? No problem here we go. Using AI in my example Chat GTP start with the following:
note: replace cooking with whatever your niche is!
Code:
can you create 20 audience demographics please focused around cooking, just create a nice simple 1-20
Certainly! Here are 20 audience demographics focused around cooking:
- Home Cooks – People who regularly cook meals at home for themselves or their families.
- Food Enthusiasts – Individuals who love experimenting with new recipes and ingredients.
- Health-Conscious Eaters – Cooks who prioritize nutrition and use fresh, organic ingredients.
- Vegetarians – People who cook plant-based meals and seek meat-free alternatives.
- Vegans – Cooks avoiding all animal products, relying heavily on fresh produce and herbs.
- Parents Cooking for Families – Adults preparing nutritious meals for children and partners.
- Budget Cooks – Individuals who focus on affordable, homegrown, or bulk cooking options.
- Ethnic Cuisine Lovers – People passionate about exploring world cuisines in their cooking.
- Meal Preppers – Organized cooks who prepare meals ahead for the week.
Now we basically have a list of 20 different audience topics that are either connected to your entered niche above or have a connection to it.
Our next stop inside the same chat it to run the following:
Code:
I would also like you to group these into audience personas with sample names, motivations, challenges, and where to find them online (to make it even more usable for our social/marketing planning)?
It would be very powerful for targeting our audience!
GPT will start to list personas with a fictional name, motivation, challenges and habits.
1. "Sophie the Sustainable Foodie"
- Motivation: Cares about the planet, loves growing her own herbs and vegetables to cook fresh meals.
- Challenges: Limited time, looking for easy-to-grow, low-maintenance plants.
- Online Habits: Follows eco-living and zero-waste influencers on Instagram and Pinterest. Subscribes to sustainability blogs and YouTube cooking channels.
2. "Tom the Batch Cooker Dad"
- Motivation: Feeds a family of 5 on a budget. Wants to cook in bulk using fresh, healthy ingredients.
- Challenges: Needs cost-effective seeds that produce high yields and are easy for beginners.
- Online Habits: Active in Facebook parenting groups and Reddit’s r/EatCheapAndHealthy. Watches budget meal prep videos on YouTube.
This information lets you start to connect with your customers you can discover accidental pain points under challenges, buying habits, how they may use your products and anything else that might going on with that customer.
Why does this become important? Well even on this basic level of creating a persona you might discover you have been communicating to males when your audience is female. Or you may have missed an age demographic totally.
We can keep going to refine this further
Now let's keep letting AI do most of the leg work for us and ask the following:
Code:
I would like you to design a marketing campaign or post templates for some of these personas
(e.g., Instagram ad ideas for Tom, blog ideas for Shopie, etc?)
It would really help connect marketing directly to each audience!
Note what ever fictional name GPT assigns to your personas please enter 1-3 of those in so it knows what you are referring to the latest version is a little smarter but previous versions not so much at this point.
We end up with an output similar to this:
Persona: Tom the Batch Cooker Dad
Platform: Instagram & Facebook Ads
Goal: Promote value-packed, high-yield seed bundles
Post Template (Instagram Ad):
“Feed the Family Without Breaking the Bank”
Image: A vibrant tray of roasted root vegetables captioned “Grown for under £5”
Text:
"Big harvests, small costs. Our budget-friendly seed bundles are perfect for batch cooks like Tom!
Easy to grow, store, and cook.
Ideal for family meals & meal prep!
Start growing today → [link]"
CTA: “Shop Bulk Grower Bundles”
Hashtags: #BudgetMeals #GrowYourOwn #FamilyCooking
Persona: Sophie the Sustainable Foodie
Platform: Blog + Pinterest
Goal: Drive traffic and reinforce your brand’s eco values
Blog Post Idea:
Title: “From Soil to Supper: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Sustainable Home Cooking”
Structure:
- Quick intro to Sophie’s values
- Highlight your biodegradable packaging and sustainable sourcing
- Include a simple seasonal recipe using herbs/veg she can grow
- Pin-worthy images for Pinterest
- Free downloadable planting calendar
CTA: “Ready to grow your first eco garden? Explore our sustainable seed range.”
Already with a few quick prompts GPT has given us some ideas of how to connect with each of our customer types, relevant hashtags to use on social media, blog posts they may care about and want to read about.
This is vital when it comes to any adverts you may wish to run, communicating with an audience type or better still finding new customers. You can ask GPT to create a list of ideas for both social media and content creation for a specific persona just to get your own creative juices flowing:
Now let's start to target these personas
Code:
Focusing on Persona: Tom the Batch Cooker Dad
Can you create a full campaign to target this customer persona type. I would like the following:
10 blog ideas
10 post ideas for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube shorts.
Relevant social media hashtags to use that only target this persona.
A collection of relevant ad hooks
Id also like some CTA to use within posts
And an advert example
Here is the output for the above:
Persona Focus: Tom the Batch Cooker Dad
Motivations: Feeding his family affordably and healthily.
Challenges: Time-poor, budget-conscious, wants easy wins.
Values: Bulk cooking, meal prepping, value for money, reliability.
10 Blog Post Ideas
- "How to Grow Your Own Veg for £10 a Month"
- "Batch Cooking from Your Garden: 7 Easy Meals to Freeze"
- "Top 5 Vegetables That Practically Grow Themselves"
- "How to Feed a Family of 4 with a 1m² Garden"
- "Bulk Buy Seeds, Bulk Cook Meals: A Gardener’s Guide"
- "Why Every Meal Prepper Should Be Growing Onions & Beans"
- "The Ultimate Family Garden Planner (Free PDF Download!)"
- "Meal Planning Starts in the Soil: Growing for Your Week Ahead"
- "The Most Productive Crops for Busy Dads on a Budget"
- "5 Freezer-Friendly Recipes Made with Homegrown Veg"
10 Social Post Ideas
(Adaptable to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram Reels & YouTube Shorts)
- “Watch me grow 7 dinners from £5 worth of seeds.” – Time-lapse from planting to prepping meals.
- “What I cook with 3 veg from my garden—zero waste, all taste.” – Family-friendly meal prep showcase.
- “Freeze now, eat later.” – Fast-paced cooking reel of prepping homegrown veg for the freezer.
- “Plant these 5 seeds if you’re feeding a hungry family.” – Captioned, visual top-5 list.
- “The 3 veg I grow every single year (and why you should too).” – Quick tips & ROI talk.
- “Batch cooking starts in your garden. Here’s how.” – Voiceover storytelling with garden shots.
- “This one veg gives me 10+ meals. Any guesses?” – Engagement post, reveal in comments.
- “Save money, save dinner.” – Fast cuts between shopping prices vs. growing your own.
- “From seed to slow cooker.” – Speedrun reel from planting to pulling out cooked meals.
- “How I made 14 meals from one £2 seed pack.” – Micro-documentary style.
Relevant Hashtags (Tom-Specific & Targeted)
- #BatchCookingDad
- #MealPrepOnABudget
- #GrowToFeed
- #FamilyMealPrep
- #GrowCookFreeze
- #BudgetCookingIdeas
- #FamilyFoodFromSeeds
- #HomeGrownMeals
- #MealPlanningDad
- #FeedTheFamilyCheap
Ad Hooks (Headlines & Opening Lines)
- “Ditch supermarket prices. Grow your own dinners.”
- “Tom grows meals, not just veg—so can you.”
- “Feed your family with £5 worth of seeds.”
- “Busy week? Batch-cook straight from your garden.”
- “Turn your garden into your grocery store.”
- “Freeze now, thank yourself later—garden-style.”
- “Big harvests for big appetites.”
- “Tired of price hikes? Grow the staples you cook most.”
- “Real dads grow dinner.”
- “Homegrown, homecooked, family-approved.”
CTAs for Social & Ads
- “Start growing your weekly meals today.”
- “Shop the Batch Cooker Seed Kit now.”
- “Feed your family for less—see how.”
- “Grow. Cook. Freeze. Repeat.”
- “Get our FREE family garden planner.”
- “Try our most productive veg seeds today.”
- “Cook more. Spend less. Start with seeds.”
- “Click to grow your first batch-cook harvest.”
Ad Example: Facebook/Instagram Sponsored Post
Image/Video:
Side-by-side: left shows a supermarket receipt (£60), right shows a garden harvest + meals made with overlay “£5 seed pack → 10 meals”
Headline:
“Feed Your Family for Less—Grow It Yourself!”
Text:
Tom needed a way to save money without sacrificing quality family meals.
So he started small—with one of our Batch Cooker Seed Kits.
Now? He’s growing dinner staples right outside his door.
Budget-friendly
Easy-to-grow
Designed for family cooking
Stop overpaying. Start growing.
[Shop Now]
As you can see we have gone from discovering who our customers are to creating a full on marketing campaign to target them. We can specifically spend money and time if needed to reach new customers and talk to only this customer type.
This is a little more advance and time heavy compared to just a generic run down and targeting cooking as a whole! As your business grows so does how you engage, keep and acquire new customers.
If you made it this far, hope you understood I didn't want this to be a full lesson on using personas I just wanted to highlight how you can do this with no budget, if you can access your own customer info all he better but at a starting point it gives you a new direction to jump off in.
Save your profiles and create the above output for each persona GPT creates you can ask it to export these to PDF and you can start to get to work in your own time
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