The death of the persona. Signals are the new ICP.

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Welcome to the 220th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

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If you notice, every CMO or Marketer has a persona doc. "VP of Marketing at a $5 to $50M B2B SaaS." "Millennial mom in suburban USA."

These documents were useful in 2018. In 2026 they are filtering out the buyers most likely to buy.

[1] What happened

Campaigns targeted on behavioral signals are outperforming persona-targeted campaigns by 2 to 3 times in conversion rate across both B2B SaaS and B2C DTC.

Match rates on firmographic targeting in B2B have dropped 30 to 50% because buying committees no longer match the org chart you targeted.

In B2C, demographic targeting on Meta and TikTok is underperforming interest and behavior segments by similar margins.

The buyers who break your persona are now the buyers who convert.

The buyers who match your persona are already saturated by every competitor running the same targeting.

[2] Why it happened

Identity got fluid.

A B2B buyer researches your category as a VP of Marketing at 9am, as a parent at 6pm, and as a small business operator at 10pm.

A B2C shopper buys as themselves on Monday, as a partner gifting on Wednesday, and as a household manager on Friday.

The persona was a static snapshot in a static buyer world. The buyer is no longer static.

AI agents made it worse. Agents have no persona. They research and recommend across categories without identifying as any segment you defined.

They convert if your offer matches a real-time signal, not a demographic profile.

[3] What you do about it

Replace static personas with dynamic signals.

In B2B, target behavioral intent. Specific page views, tool searches, downloads, and content engagement signals beat firmographic filters.

Tools like RB2B, Warmly, Clearbit Reveal, 6sense, and Bombora surface intent before identity. Use them as the primary trigger, not as a secondary layer on top of an ICP filter.

In B2C, target action and context, not demographic. What a buyer did in the last 30 minutes predicts conversion better than who they are.

Lookalike audiences built on high-LTV customer behavior beat lookalikes built on persona profiles.

Build segments around what the buyer is doing, not who they are.

Final Words

[1] Pull your campaign performance from last quarter. Compare conversion rates of persona-targeted segments against behavior-targeted segments. The gap is what you have been leaving on the table.

[2] Retire your 2023 persona doc next quarter. Replace it with three to five signal-based segments tied to specific buying actions and content engagement triggers.

[3] Shift at least 30 percent of paid budget from persona-targeted to signal-targeted campaigns. Measure for 90 days and re-allocate from there.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria