In order to “succeed on the web under the new rules of marketing and PR, you need to consider your organizational goals and then focus on your buyers first” (Scott, 2013, pg. 162). He further states, “only when you understand buyers should you begin to create compelling web content to reach them” (Scott, 2013, pg. 162).
There are 3 essential components when making buyer profiling a key part of the marketing and PR plan process. These consist of understanding organizational goals, creating descriptive an segmented buyer persona profliles, and aligning web marketing and media choices based off of those buyer personas.
There are 3 essential components when making buyer profiling a key part of the marketing and PR plan process. These consist of understanding organizational goals, creating descriptive an segmented buyer persona profliles, and aligning web marketing and media choices based off of those buyer personas.
Understanding
Organizational Goals
As organizational goals are discussed, there are 2 components that make for
successful goals:
1. Goals must
be clear. Vague goals don’t produce intended results or motivate people to
perform. An example of a vague goal would be to do radio advertisements over
the next 6 weeks. There is no clarity on what the organization seeks to
accomplish other than adding a new element to their existing marketing mix.
2. Goals must be specific. Unspecific organizational goals are not measurable. An example of an unspecific goal would be to add an alumni section to a higher education institution’s website. An example of a specific goal would be the goal of increasing alumni web traffic by 10% over the next 6 weeks.
The Buyer Persona
Profile
A buyer persona profile is simply a representative of a type
of buyer that an organization has identified as having a specific interest in their
organization or product (Scott, 2013, pg. 164).
For each buyer persona, there are specific questions that need to be
asked. These questions include the following:
What are their goals and aspirations?
What are their problems?
What media do they rely on for answers to their problems?
How can we reach them?
The best way to learn about buyers and develop buyer
personas is to interview them (Scott, 2013, pg. 164). Developing buyer personas
is a learned ability to get into the minds and hearts of the target audience
and to understand their needs and problems that can be solved by your
organization’s products or services.
Buyer Personas & Web Marketing
The typical website has a “one size fits all” approach to marketing. Scott proposes that “one of the simplest ways to build an effective website or to create great marketing programs using online content is to target the specific buyer personas that you have created” (Scott, 2013, pg. 169). Instead of organizing websites based on products and services themselves, the proposed thought by Scott is to organize web content more intentionally around the buyer personas that have been created. An example of this would be a higher education website that creates a buyer persona for undergraduate students, graduate students, parents, alumni, and donors. Developing these buyer personas thoroughly allows there to be increased website effectiveness. In order to be effective, the organization needs to anticipate the buyer’s questions and then answer them by creating compelling content (Gray, 2013).
Do you agree with Scott’s point about the importance of
buyer personas in the marketing plan process and what practical steps have you seen
used to develop effective buyer personas?
References:
Gray, J. (2013,
April 25). Four Tips for Building Fail-Proof Buyer Personas. Retrieved February
10, 2014, from Marketing Profs website: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/10618/four-tips-for-building-fail-proof-buyer-personas
Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR.
Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Isaac,
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis of Scott's "You are what you publish: Building your marketing and PR plan." Your analogy is a great attention grabber to readers, relating common elements to a scholastic approach. The video you shared pairs perfectly with your discussion this week, and I love that Shannon brings up the hard truth that "you cannot appeal to everyone." I would maybe change your still image to reflect the witty analogy your made references essential ingredients and cooking, as it might intrigue readers to wonder where cooking meets marketing!
Social Media Today has a great article discussing the benefits of using buyer personas for content marketing. They add that developing buyer personas creates 3 primary advantages for marketers:
1. They improve the return (ROI) on strategic marketing activities. Most companies have limited marketing funds that have to be allocated to many marketing initiatives. Personas enable you to develop cost-effective marketing strategies that are predicated on how your target customers are most likely to act.
2. They assist with objective planning. Creating marketing content for a specific target audience is difficult/impossible if you don’t understand how that segment is likely to respond. A buyer persona provides the information and context you need in order to make objective decisions about how to construct your marketing messages.
3. They foster the development of strong brand messaging. It’s great that you want your marketing content to cast as wide a net as possible, but the inevitable result is message dilution – since it’s not succinct and targeted, it will reach far fewer people. Buyer personas help you craft and tailor your marketing messages so you can achieve the best possible outcome. (Dyer, 2014)
I am glad you chose to bring up that the best way to learn about buyers and develop buyer personas is to interview them (Scott, 2013, pg. 164). Although fully supported by Scott, I am not sure I agree and think this lends for an excellent debate. With the development of social media, are interviews still the best method to determine buyer personas?
I encourage you to read this article: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/09/build-better-buyer-persona-data-sourcing-ideas/
It discusses several other options for gathering buyer persona data instead of interviews in a modern age environment. Let me know what you think and if you still agree with Scott that interviewing is still the best method.
Great post, Isaac!
References:
Dyer, P. 2014, February 9). Buyer personas: the key to content marketing. Retrieved on February 11, 2014 from Social Media Today: http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/2157411/buyer-personas-keys-content-marketing
Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Brianna,
DeleteI am definitely not a proponent that individual surveys are the best method for creating buyer personas. With the tools you mentioned in the attached link like Google Consumer Surveys, there are many ways to retrieve information on buyers without the arduous task of personally interviewing everyone. I don't feel that interviews should be dismissed, but I also don't feel they are the most efficient use of time given the other methods at our disposal.
What was the most important and helpful piece of content for you in the 4 assigned chapters we read this week and why? Thanks for your thoughts and dialogue.
Isaac,
DeleteFrom a marketing standpoint and learning something new, I would have to say that while personal recommendations, social media and job searching, and the effects of social media on the political landscape were all engaging, they served more as business cases for me. Your designated chapter helped enlighten me on more business aspects of integrating goals on a corporate level in addition to further understanding target audiences with buyer personas.
As a social media specialist, the other chapters were further validation of a lot of instances that I had a lot of prior knowledge about. In addition, it helped me to rethink back to our research class, and how classifications and understanding target audiences in fact helps propel marketing campaigns from executed properly. Combining those elements, overall, and the highest impact this week on my learning.
What chapter[s] other than your own did you gain the greatest amount of knowledge from this past week? Would you have selected a different chapter?
Hi Isaac,
ReplyDeleteAwesome and very detailed post! First of all I love your intro and the comparison you made to cooking. (Do you cook?) I think that after reading Scott's chapter and how he lays out for you not only the importance of the buyer persona but he even gives readers a step by step of how to determine your companies buyer persona's and then what to do after you've established your buyer persona's. The example Scott uses of the college website makes it so easy to understand. For a college website, like Marist for instance, there could potentially be five different buyer personas:
1. young alumni (those who graduated within the past 10 to 15 years)
2. older alumni
3. the high school student who is considering college
4. the parents of the prospective student
5. current students
Another important thing you touched on in your post was understanding your organizations goals. In order to effectively determine your company's buyer persona's you must agree on your business goals. From there the buyer personas that will help your company reach those goals can be created. Continuing with the college website, Scott gives great examples of the schools possible goals which could be to generate 500 additional applications for admissions and also raise $5M in donations from alumni who have never contributed before.
Did you find Scott's Marketing & PR Strategy Planning Template helpful?
Resources:
Scott, D. M. (2013). The new rules of marketing & pr. (4th ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley & Son.
Damaris,
DeleteI found Scott's Marketing & PR Strategy Planning Template extremely helpful. Scott starts with targeting the description of the buyer and the need for the marketer to identify what problems the buyer has. He then moves on to the question of why the buyer is buying form the marketer and what actions the marketer is asking the buyer to take. Then comes the question of defining how valuable a service or product is to the buyer and what makes it unique. He then proposes the need to discover where the buyer is present (blogs, twitter, etc.). After this, Scott helps the marketer identify what kind of organization he/she represents and the kind of design and brand voice needed with key words and content strategy to reach the buyer.
I have been looking for this kind of planning template during our whole time in the MA IMC program and found this to be very helpful and very practical.
What did you find to be the most helpful content of the chapter?
Isaac
Hi Isaac,
DeleteIt's one thing to read a chapter and it's a totally different thing to retain the information of what you read. Scott's chapter made it easy to map out a step by step process even without the graphic template he provided. Although the chapter focused heavily on buyer personas I think one of the most important pieces of information to take away from this chapter is step one of the process which is to establish your company's organizational goals. Marketing and PR goals must be aligned with the goals of the organization; only then can you begin to establish what target audiences (or buyer personas) are going to help your company achieve those goals.
Isaac,
ReplyDeleteGreat approach to cover the importance of buyers persona to marketers and goal setting. These are two very important components to market planning. I really like how you organized the blog. Nicely done! I also enjoyed watching the video you shared.
To answer your question I do agree with Scott's point about the importance of buyers personas in the marketing plans. Before investing on a product companies need to ensure there is a market for it and then they need to identify who their market is. Once they do that they should speak directly with that customer. Scott describes well the types of questions marketers need to ask to identify buyer personas: What do you want each group to believe about your organization. What messages will you use to reach them on the web? To name a few. p.173
We can find some great examples online of companies who address their clients directly and effectively. For instance Nike speaks well to its target because they look to address each athlete's needs separately. They do not use the "one size fits all" approach. http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/?cp=usns_kw_AL!1778!3!33284329982!e!!g!nike
Would you also share an example of another company that also demonstrates they understand the power of tailoring their messages and do that effectively?
Great job!
Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ana,
DeleteThe attached link describes the the tip new marketing job title recruited and hired will be “Director of Content” -http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/10/08/the-top-7-content-marketing-trends-that-will-dominate-2014/ .
Regarding key companies with great tailored messaging, I have always enjoyed Anheuser Busch because of their masterful job of targeting male sports fans in their "It's only weird if it doesn't work" campaign. Examples are found at http://cargocollective.com/zachgolden/Bud-Light-NFL.
What company other than Nike do you think is masterful in their content marketing strategy and why?
Isaac
Isaac,
ReplyDeleteFirst off let me start by saying I loved how you started out your blog post this week. I often find there is greater meaning in the cooking/baking process and that there is something to be said about how we prepare our food. More or less I find a metaphoric significance in something greater when I am cooking. In the case of your reference I would say well-developed buyer persona profiles would be the salt that is often missing in recipes. Without focus on buyers (or without adding salt) your hard work and preparation would fall apart both literally and figuratively. When you understand what salt can do to your recipe (or to your campaign) do you really understand why it is completely necessary to never forget about it.
Enough food talk though, in all seriousness, you brought up some great points in the reading. As far as the organization of goals, and out of the readings context, I would just like to add that organizational goals should be ambitious but also realistic and honest with the organizational standing.
As far as buyer personas I would have to agree with you and Scott as it pertains to understanding buyers’ personalities, needs, and general traits. Yes, there are going to be some hasty generalizations about a specific target group but this offers room to learn and grow with this target market where as the “one size fits all” approach would not take into consideration these changes. I really like Ana’s Nike example as Nike has separate campaigns for a variety of consumers needs. The company understands and markets towards specific buyer personas, demonstrating the company’s deep knowledge on who buys their products and why they make the purchase decisions that they do. Another example of a company that does this in a similar but different capacity would be http://freshpet.com/ This site allows you to input your pet’s needs and it shows you products in their line that fit those needs, allowing for informed consumer decision making to happen in a seamless, reduced pressure environment.
Taking a quick look at the site, what do you think we can learn from the interactive and customizable nature of the site? How can we learn from this and use this to approach customers needs and buying practices as we continue into the 21st century?
References:
Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Rhianna,
DeleteThanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of freshpet.com but I love how interactive the site is. My kids frequent many of the online kids gaming sites. I am currently unaware of how they make their money, but the interactivity of the sites are wonderful. My kids play all the time on the web and there are many web based learning games for free.
What I like about freshpet.com is that it fosters active two-way engagement by getting the user visually and kinetically stimulated. I think this will only increase in the future as an effective marketing tool. For products that are of interest to prospective buyers, interacting with the product online is a great way to foster engagement and potentially increase sales.
I am amazed at how popular this sort of interactive online environment is, because I'm not that interested in them. What are some other examples you have seen of this done effectively in a way that has increased revenue for an organization?
Thanks!
Isaac
Hi Isaac,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post this week on buyer persona. I do agree with Scott in that buyer persona is an important part of the puzzle in relation to correctly targeting an audience for your product or service. As I said in my blog, in regard to Scott suggesting to ditch the 4 P's of Marketing, Product, price, place, and promotion, and focus on the customer experience, I agree with that statement. I think this approach is not something new, but, I think fueled by the power of social media, this approach is becoming the norm, and companies need to realize this moving forward is they want to remain competitive in this environment.
When thinking about buyer persona, I feel it is important for companies to invest the time and money it takes to figure out exactly who their ideal customer is. This can become quite a task when a company might have many different products or skews they represent. When do we draw the line? Do you think there might be a way to create a universal buyer persona for a certain segment of the market that would be as effective as focusing a strategic plan toward one product or service?
- Dan
Dan,
DeleteI think many times multiple buyer personas are needed to effectively segment and target certain audiences for a particular product. If a buyer persona is too universal, I think the messaging starts to lose impact.
Is there a particular company you know of that uses buyer personas very effectively? If so, how?
Thanks!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIsaac,
ReplyDeleteI used your posting to take a look at our nonprofit organization and ask a couple questions of our own efforts. Based on FedEx Corp.’s CFO, Alan Graf, “Communications has to be able to talk to people inside and outside of the company” (Argenti, Howell, & Beck, 2005). This statement is intertwined in your theme of putting the buyer first. In order to communicate effectively one must put themselves in the shoes of the targeted audience, in your case the buy, in my case the families affected by NPD. Initial goals of the organization are easily definable, but the goals that are you trying to accomplish with you buyers might need adjusting in order to be successful.
The two components for successful goals relate back to the audience. Today I decided to just look at the audience of families affected by NPD. One of our main goals of communicating the latest research and medical updates from researchers and doctors are crucial to our credibility and value to our audience. At first I thought this goal was quite vague, but I looked back and we rely heavily on a particular group of doctors and researchers that have been transparent of their finding and clinical trials. Therefore, I believe that we are doing our best by relaying their information appropriately.
The component of being specific in our goals has been a process that we are constantly tweaking. We are always looking at our development goals and what we are asking of our families in the form of financial support. After reading through your post I have realized that this might need more attention and a better clarification on our part especially for our October Awareness efforts.
How does our organization deal with the ever-changing specificity of goals? Does someone or a group constantly manage them? Do they ever realize that there is a need for adjustment, or do you think these goals need to be more concrete?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity o read your post and be reflective on my own organization.
Reference:
Argenti, P. A., Howell, R. A., & Beck, K. A. (2005, Spring). The strategic communication imperative. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from MIT Slaon Management Review: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/communicators/fall08/reading/Sloan_MIT_Strat_Comm_Imp.pdf
Rebecca,
DeleteI think goals should be specific, concrete and measurable. Even if the goals change, as they do in many organizations, there needs to be enough specificity and time given so performance can be measured. At a first glance, the goals don't seem specific enough or measurable enough. Is there a way to add more detail and timelines, percentages, etc. that can zero in on acomplishing the tasks at hand?
Also, what is the best nonprofit marketing resource you have found online or in print?
Issac,
ReplyDeleteIn reading your post the thing that stood out to me was the following quote; “The most important thing to remember as you develop a marketing and PR plan is to put your products and services to the side for just a little while and focus your complete attention on the buyers of your products” (Scott, 2013, pg. 161). This is a key element in the success of any product. To build products or provide services that only takes care of the needs of a company is not strategically smart. Apple is one company that has understood the needs of the customer and has a great understanding of the buyer profile. Applle follows three key points in order to do this:-
Empathy – Truly understand their [customer] needs better than any other company.
Focus – In order to do a good job of the things they decide to do, they eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.
Impute – People DO judge a book by its cover. They may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc.; if they present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if they present them in a creative, professional manner, they will impute the desired qualities ( Moorman, Christine, Why Apple is a great marketeer).
Reference:
Moorman, Christine. "Why Apple Is a Great Marketer." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 July 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. .
Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Isaac,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and found the video very informative. I agree with Scott in that consumer personas should be the center of social media strategy. When it comes to social media, we search for sites that suit us and find ways in which to personalize them to make us feel like the site fits our lives better. If a company is able to make a site that suits our needs, we can navigate the site better, and most importantly want to use the site.
In my experience working with buyer personas, we start with usage occasion. When and why is the product is used. Then we separate ourselves from the product. The people using it, who are they, what do they look like, who do they associate with, where do they like to go, etc. Separate those groups into sub groups, such as busy working moms, newly weds expecting, etc. Then shoot back and find out where those sub groups shop and reconnect them with the product.
Do you think circling back in this way helps reconnect the complete goal back to making products and services or negates building personas?
I like the idea of circling back ad starting first and foremost with getting into the hearts and minds of the people using the product and when they are using it. I think these steps are very helpful and follow a logical process to creating holistic and effective buyer personas.
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