How to Create and Assign Personas

Personas help you standardise your ideal customer profile (ICP) using job-based filters. Once created, you can apply them in search to ensure consistent targeting across your team.

Prerequisites

• You must have admin permissions

Create a smart persona

Use a smart persona to generate a starting point using Cognism AI.

1. Go to Personas from the main menu.

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2. Click Create Smart Persona.

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3. Enter a short description of your business.
4. Click the arrow to generate the persona.
5. Review the suggested name and edit if needed.
6. Review the suggested job titles.
7. Click 'Create Persona' to setup the persona.
8. Note: You can add or refine filters such as after the Smart Persona has been configured using the edit button in the persona management tab. 
   • Job title
   • Department
   • Seniority
   • Location

Smart personas provide a quick way to generate relevant targeting criteria, which you can refine further.

Create a manual persona

Use a manual persona for full control over your targeting criteria.

1. Go to Personas from the main menu.
2. Click "+ New"
3. Enter a clear, descriptive name (for example, UK Tech Decision Makers).

4. Define your filters:

• Job title

  • Use broad match for keyword-based matching
  • Use exact match for specific job titles
  • Include or exclude job titles as needed
  • Upload a CSV file to import job titles

• Department

  • Select from the predefined list

• Seniority

  • Select from the predefined list

• Location

  • Select from the predefined options

5. Click Save.

Your persona is now available in the Personas management view.

Assign a persona

Assign personas to teams or users to standardise how filters are applied in search.

1. Go to Personas.
2. Locate the persona in the list.
3. Open the Assigned to dropdown.
4. Select the relevant team(s) or user(s).
5. Click Assign.

Assigned users can now access the persona in search, with filters pre-applied.

Expected results

After creating and assigning a persona, you can:

• Apply consistent targeting criteria across your team
• Reduce manual filter setup in search
• Ensure alignment on ideal customer profiles