Persona template

Your team is trying to create something people genuinely want, but nobody can agree on who those people are. One stakeholder imagines tech-savvy early adopters; another insists the real customers are cautious, middle-aged buyers who only read email. Without an ideal user in mind, your marketing campaigns feel scattered, your product roadmap changes frequently, and messaging never quite resonates. Our persona template can change all of that!

The persona template provides your team with a single, shared source of truth for understanding your audience. Whether you’re creating a user persona, a buyer persona, or a marketing persona, this template makes it easy to map out demographics, pain points, behaviors, and goals in a single, reusable format. You’ll save time on persona creation while building agreement across teams, from UX design and product management to marketing and sales.

Who benefits from persona templates?

One product team at Asana was gearing up to launch a new feature, only to realize too late that they’d built it for the wrong customer profile. Now they incorporate persona templates across all product teams to remain connected with the actual users they serve.

An audience persona template is useful any time you’re trying to represent a group of people in your decision-making process. It’s especially valuable for marketing teams, product managers, UX designers, and sales strategists who need to customize workflows and messaging to match the specific personality traits of their target customers. Instead of vague assumptions or inconsistent notes, your team can rely on consistent persona examples during every stage of the user journey.

Industries like software development, retail, education, healthcare, and consumer goods often use customer persona templates to guide strategy. When you define ideal customers for a new product or refresh your audience personas to support a rebrand, using a template keeps the process consistent, collaborative, and based on real data.

Why use Asana’s persona template

A client’s UX team once realized they stored their research findings in folders and documents that no one had opened. After switching to Asana’s user persona template, they built a shared persona library with visual, living documents that kept everyone on the same page.

Creating personas already takes time, and Asana’s persona template reduces rework, centralizes key insights, and makes audience research an active part of your workflow. Instead of separate whiteboard snapshots, Google Docs, or slide decks, your user personas now exist where your team works: within your projects, linked to your tasks, and visible across departments.

Use this free template to:

• Centralize persona profiles with linked files, interviews, and insights.

• Track stakeholder comments and edits in real time.

• Connect persona insights directly to product and marketing tasks.

• Update and maintain personas without starting from scratch.

• Ensure consistent understanding of your target market across all teams.

How to use this persona template

We designed this marketing persona template to be intuitive for teams of any size or structure. You can tailor each section to your needs. Visit Asana’s template gallery to explore other tools that help simplify your marketing and product workflows.

Step 1: Add your first persona

Start by duplicating the template and giving your persona a descriptive name; something that captures their role or behavior (like “Data-Savvy Decision Maker” or “First-Time Buyer”). A memorable persona makes it easier to scan and reference later.

In the List view, each row represents a task. Create one task under each section, like Demographics, Pain Points, and Goals, that reflects different aspects of your target audience. You can assign tasks to collaborators, set due dates for reviews, and even attach files to each persona section for richer context.

Step 2: Fill in demographic information

Use the Demographics section to build the foundation of your persona. Include key attributes like age, income bracket, education level, and preferred software or channels. Demographic information anchors your persona in the real-world context of your target market.

The template includes column headers like Persona Age, Income Bracket, and Education Level to guide your input. You can customize these columns as needed—adding fields for location, gender, or industry—so your demographic data stays structured and easy to scan across personas.

Step 3: Document behaviors and habits

In the Behaviors section, describe how your persona interacts with tools, content, or brands like yours. What channels do they frequent? Do they rely on peer recommendations, product demos, or reviews when evaluating solutions?

This section is a good place to explore psychographic traits, such as digital fluency, research habits, or time spent on social media. Assigning a task here allows your team to add insights and link supporting documents, such as survey results or behavior analysis reports, directly to the persona profile.

Step 4: Define goals and motivations

Next, dive into what drives your persona. In the Goals and Motivations section, capture what they’re hoping to achieve personally or professionally. What challenges are they trying to overcome? What does success look like for them?

Use this step to determine how your product or service fits into their decision-making process. Whether you're planning a marketing campaign or designing a new product, understanding motivations helps you align messaging and feature prioritization with real user needs.

Step 5: Capture pain points

This section helps your team focus on the problems that matter most to your users. Add tasks under Pain Points to describe the frustrations, obstacles, or inefficiencies your persona faces in their current situation.

This insight is critical for shaping both product features and positioning. Use tags or custom fields to categorize pain points by severity or theme, and connect them to specific real-world user journey moments. For example, technical barriers, budget constraints, or a lack of internal buy-in.

Step 6: Highlight background and key traits

Add depth to your persona profile in the Background and Key Traits section. Include elements like personality type, lifestyle, tone preferences, or standout characteristics that influence how they communicate or consume content.

This section helps differentiate personas who may have similar goals but approach problems in different ways. You can link to interviews, customer stories, or case studies to make each persona feel more vivid and grounded in real examples.

Step 7: Map communication channels and influencers

In the final section, identify which communication channels your persona trusts most: email, SMS, forums, webinars, or social platforms. Note any influencers, internal stakeholders, or communities that shape their decisions.

This step is especially valuable for teams working on marketing strategies, sales outreach, or influencer engagement plans. By mapping out these preferred channels, your messaging and campaigns can meet your target audience where they’re already active.

Asana mapping features

A feature in Asana is any built-in tool that lets you customize your workflows, simplify collaboration, or better visualize information. When you use the persona template, features like views, fields, and integrations help you adapt it to different teams and goals. Here are a few features that make persona creation easier and more effective.

Custom Fields

Add custom fields for categories like demographics, behaviors, user needs, or marketing channels. For example, you might include a dropdown for “Preferred Contact Method” (email, SMS, social media) or “Pain Point Severity” (low, medium, high). These fields let you standardize data across all persona profiles.

Project Views

Switch between List, Board, and Calendar views to suit your team's preferred work style. Use Board view to organize personas by audience segment (e.g., small business, enterprise, individual consumer) or buyer stage. Toggling between project views improves UX design and cross-team visibility.

Task Comments

Encourage team-wide collaboration by using comments to gather feedback and insights. For example, your sales team might share insights about real target customers that help refine personas. You can tag teammates, add context, and link to supporting materials directly in each persona task.

File Attachments

Upload persona images, interviews, survey data, or Canva graphics to add depth to each profile. Designers can add style boards, while researchers can attach raw notes, keeping everything in one place.

Templates

Save time by creating your reusable persona template that includes your team’s preferred fields, structure, and naming conventions. Custom persona templates are convenient if you’re working with multiple target audiences or running concurrent marketing campaigns.

Recommended integrations

Integrations enable you to connect third-party tools to Asana, allowing your team to pull in data, collaborate, and minimize manual work. When using a buyer persona template or a user persona template, integrations make it easier to sync research, design assets, and messaging across platforms. Explore all integrations in the Asana App Gallery.

HubSpot

Use HubSpot to import contact lists or CRM insights directly into your customer persona template. This provides your marketing and sales teams with a detailed view of actual audience data, enabling you to build more accurate persona profiles.

Canva

Design and embed visuals that represent your personas—like mood boards or sample ads—using Canva’s integration. Great for marketing and design teams who want to illustrate the personality or style of each ideal customer.

Google Drive

Link interview recordings, survey results, or persona documentation stored in Google Drive directly to your template. Using this integration centralizes your market research and gives context for decisions during the design process.

Slack

Use Slack to loop in team members or stakeholders when personas are updated. You can automatically send notifications when changes are made, so product and marketing teams stay in sync throughout development.

easytasker.io

Use EasyTasker.io to assign tasks based on persona insights automatically. For example, once a persona’s pain point or goal is updated, you can trigger a follow-up task for your product managers, designers, or content creators.

FAQs about persona templates