Marketing Communications Treating customers with respect earns you trust and loyalty. "Buyer personas — because they inherently generalize consumers — have traditionally lacked empathy, making it difficult for marketers to truly diversify their efforts. We’ve been told for the last decade that segmentation (dividing potential customers into groups based on shared characteristics) and focus are essential to reach paying leads.   "Companies using personas to craft marketing and sales tactics develop a clearer understanding of their buyers, but this method can backfire. Even small audiences contain vastly different individuals, and traditional personas don’t embrace every person in that sampling.  "Here’s how you can use empathy to develop diverse personas and better reach a broader group of consumers."  Article: How to Create Marketing Personas That Start With Empathy