{"id":15523,"date":"2022-10-31T13:52:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T13:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/negative-persona\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T18:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T18:08:13","slug":"negative-persona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userpilot.com\/blog\/negative-persona\/","title":{"rendered":"Negative Persona in SaaS: Why You Need to Have One and How to Create It"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a marketing standpoint, it first seems like a negative persona shouldn’t be a major worry.<\/p>\n

Sure, every product marketer<\/a> appreciates the importance of knowing their ideal buyer personas to help cultivate the right leads.<\/p>\n

But what about the customer on the opposite end? This article will examine negative personas, what makes them essential for SaaS businesses, and how you can build one.<\/p>\n

What is a negative persona?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A negative persona is a semi-fictional representation of your least likely customer profiles. They’re also called exclusionary personas, and they’re a collection of the needs, values, and behaviors of individuals that differentiate them from your ideal customer.<\/p>\n

Negative persona vs. Negative buyer persona<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Often used interchangeably, “negative personas” and “negative buyer personas” refer to different sides of the same concept.<\/p>\n

You create a negative buyer persona to capture the decision-makers. These can be people in accounting or management positions who are unlikely to decide in favor of your product.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, negative personas, like user personas, refer to actual product users who do not fit your product. You identify negative personas using their behaviors, motivations, and needs.<\/p>\n

So, negative buyer personas are more significant to the sales and marketing teams, whereas negative personas are more significant to product teams.<\/p>\n

Why are user personas important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A user persona represents the individual who benefits the most from using your product. It is your ideal user, curated using quantitative and qualitative research.<\/p>\n

Although they may not always refer to paying customers, user personas capture the biggest pain points and motivations of those who use your product. This information helps you create user journey maps<\/a>, which make it easier for end users to use your product.<\/p>\n

Why should you create a negative persona?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If negative personas are less than ideal users for your product, why bother creating them? What makes negative buyer personas important?<\/p>\n

To understand what is a bad customer fit for your SaaS<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Achieving product-customer fit<\/a> is essential to improving customer loyalty, customer retention<\/a>, and customer success<\/a>. Knowing the types of customers you don’t want helps you achieve customer fit faster while averting the feature-fallacy trap.<\/p>\n

This means you have a better idea of what your customer needs, and don’t waste time building features no one uses because they don’t fit the customer’s needs.<\/p>\n

By identifying your product’s negative personas, you can reduce the likelihood of falling into a\u00a0product death cycle.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/picture>
The Product Death Cycle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To use the process of creating negative personas to optimize your ideal user persona<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Perhaps the most ironic benefit of creating negative personas is that they help deepen your understanding of your ideal personas – making your product development and marketing efforts even more accurate.<\/p>\n

Determining why your products may not be a fit for some users may lead to new findings about the pains, desires, and jobs to be done<\/a> by your target customer.<\/p>\n

\"User<\/picture>
User persona example.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To avoid wasting your time and effort on the wrong people<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Trying to market to everyone is the fastest way to build up an unreasonably high acquisition cost. When you define negative personas, you avoid wasting time and effort on the wrong people.<\/p>\n

Outline identified customer pain points and adjust your messaging<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Every good product message<\/a> highlights your value proposition and the benefits of your product to your ideal customers. It shapes how you’re seen and sets the tone for your marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n

Negative personas identify users you shouldn’t be targeting with your messaging, which helps you fine-tune your message and attract higher-quality leads.<\/p>\n

Optimize your marketing strategies<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Curating a winning marketing strategy <\/a>requires complete knowledge of your target audience and how best to reach them.<\/p>\n

Using negative personas, you can better curate a product marketing strategy<\/a> that avoids the wrong audience and addresses the needs of your target audience.<\/p>\n

How to collect data and build negative personas<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Negative persona creation doesn’t have to be difficult. You can easily construct negative personas if you gather data<\/a> and properly evaluate it. The following steps can help you do just that.<\/p>\n

Identify characteristics of your negative personas<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Your first step when creating a negative persona should be characteristics identification.<\/p>\n

For instance, do you have a group of customers that never use your product as intended or never convert into paying customers?<\/p>\n

These are the wrong customer fit for you.<\/p>\n

Use feature tagging within your product to learn how users interact with your product features and identify negative personas among them.<\/p>\n

\"Feature<\/picture>
Feature tagging with Userpilot<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interview churned customers to learn more about your negative persona<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Take advantage of cancellation emails<\/a> to interview churned customers and understand why they churn. Use this opportunity to find out if they were an unsuitable fit for the product, and why.<\/p>\n

\"Basecamp<\/picture>
Example of a cancellation email.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Were they unhappy with the product or service? Did any specific issue force them to leave? Why do they feel their goals didn’t align with the product? What was their primary pain point(s)?<\/p>\n

You may also want to review the customer’s record on your end. Did they consume too many resources? Were they challenging or difficult to manage? If so, why’s that?<\/p>\n

Use cancellation surveys to collect more data<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Following on from the above, be sure to build automatic churn surveys<\/a> into your cancellation flow.<\/p>\n

Cancellation surveys<\/a> should be brief and include both closed and open-ended questions.<\/p>\n

\"userpilot-cancellation-flow-product-feedback-form\"<\/picture>
Example of a cancellation survey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ask customer service teams for data insights<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Always build negative personas around data from real-life scenarios. Spend time with your internal teams, such as the customer service teams, to understand the problems that customers face.<\/p>\n

You can also gather insights<\/a> from your sales and marketing teams about potential customers or leads who hang around your content but never use your service.<\/p>\n

Segment negative users<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Identify and segment negative users who sign up for your product. Users who sign up for your product but fail to use it as intended are clearly not the kind of users you want to target.<\/p>\n

Segment<\/a> inactive users to identify and group the negative ones.<\/p>\n

Use behavioral segmentation<\/a> to examine the behaviors<\/a> and in-app activities of inactive\/churned users. Identify common features and trends to help you build a negative persona.<\/p>\n

\"Segment<\/picture>
Segment users with Userpilot<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tag and track negative profiles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

What if you’ve already found some negative profiles among your customers? Be sure to tag and track these users.<\/p>\n

Set up in-app workflows and alerts with triggers that help you identify when a negative persona is switching to a positive one.<\/p>\n

\"userpilot-features-webhooks\"<\/picture><\/figure>\n

Use negative personas to nurture the right audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Negative personas can\u00a0assist you in determining where to best invest your funds and which audiences\u00a0to avoid.<\/p>\n

Once you’ve identified trends that reveal negative personas in your customer base, you want to optimize your marketing budget by focusing your resources on those that produce returns.<\/p>\n

Look for trends and similarities among negative personas<\/strong><\/h3>\n

You might have multiple negative persona profiles just like you could have several user personas. Examine each profile to identify trends and similarities between them.<\/p>\n

For example, what trends exist between negative buyer personas who never convert from free trial to paid users? Can you use these trends to segment<\/a> new users and measure what percentage of them may be negative profiles?<\/p>\n

\"Segment<\/picture>
Segment free trial users with Userpilot<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Always add to your negative persona profile<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Data is a continuum. Continue consulting your data to help you fine-tune or update your negative personas.<\/p>\n

Watch out for trends and characteristics that characterize a negative persona.<\/p>\n

\"track-events-feature-tage-usage-trends\"<\/picture><\/figure>\n

As your audience grows, your sample size increases, and your data becomes more precise. The more you learn about those who don’t convert or those who aren’t a good fit for your product, the better your marketing strategy<\/a> becomes.<\/p>\n

Ask the right questions to your team<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Finally, if you want to learn more about your customers, you must always ask the right questions. Ask your team about their experiences with your customers to proactively identify negative users. You could ask questions like:<\/p>\n