Match Marketing – how well do you know your customers?
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There has been a bit of hubub for a while about persona based marketing plans and what that really means. Personas are templates used to identify a customer on a wants and needs level, so that you can adjust your site’s user experience to be as well matched to your customer as possible. Persona based marketing is the art of identifying those personas in a way that you can build out several templates and see things from the users point of view.
The creation of personas is not an easy task, but with some online resources that you may not have thought of, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Social outlets such as myspace, facebook, flickr, technorati, wordpress, live journal, and blogger (just to name a handful) can be a great way to find out how customers interact with you. Just do a search on any two of those services for your top keywords and your brand name and you should be able to find a wealth of information.
Another great tool is the link: operator in Google. If you have back links that you didn’t have to fight for, chances are they were given to you by someone who has seen your site. A great way to find out what people think about you is to check with the users that are actively talking about your site and linking to it.
So, enough of that sounds easy to do, right? Well, let’s try it out. I’d like to take a well known brand (for a frame of common reference) and flesh out a few of these. Let’s say, the Transformers movie?
First step: search for people talking about it:
MySpace search for “Transformers Movie”
Wow, Mute Math did the new theme…
Live Journal search for “Transformers Movie”
Not a lot going on there, but still something can be gleaned. Maybe we should try again without the term “movie”.
Flickr search for “Transformers Movie”
Both collectors and people taking pictures of the movie sets.
So, we have this dearth of information, what do we do with it? Some personas are easy to guess at, but confirmation is always nice. Is it really all males from 8-25 that are into cool giant robots? Let’s see what we find:
A movie and entertainment buff, prefers content in video form and swears indie brand allegiance to most of the mainstream emo stereotypes. Has a collection of friends that he sees offline that are of a similar vain. Welcome to the late 20’s disaffected youth, who has money to burn on things that grant temporary happiness:
A late twenties woman that creates a living off of creating. She finds a love for robots and the classic chic of the 50’s blends well with her neo-leasre lifestyle. To go to as many events as she has, the roster of her affiliation with multiple online retailers must be decently profitable for her. Her interests lie in marketing and creating in an old meets new manner.
From here to here which leads to here
A toy collector who indulges his past and love of imagination through spending copious amounts of money on finding every variation of transformers toys that he can. Lives well despite his collection, as he is a home owner and has several pets in good health. He is likely to compare the new versions of his favorite characters with every previous iteration.
Now that we have these people (and this was just a rough overview generated in a brief period of time, not exclusive or all encompassing at all) what do we do with them?
Well, if you are a transformers merchandiser or working at a theater showing the transformers movie the trick to all three of these people seems to be to make them feel special through “exclusive” opportunities. They all have disposable income, all like to follow trends, and all are constantly on the lookout for something new. Two out of three of them are also staunchly determined to liven up the past through new experiences, so bringing up old catch phrases, design elements, and characters with references to the franchises past will greatly appeal to them and make them feel comfortable during the conversion process.
The power of persona profiles lies in how you use them. Analyze the way your customers are likely to talk to each other and communicate with brands in general. If you dig for a while you might just be able to get into their head and see their point of view.
What’s better for a marketer than seeing the customers point of view and being able to communicate with them in a way that’s comfortable and inviting? But be careful, user’s can smell a wolf in sheep’s clothing a mile away. Don’t go overboard.
Now go figure out who your users and potential customers are, you might be surprised at what you find.
Transform and roll out!
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Tags: ASK, Google, keywords, Marketing, Search & Marketing, Wordpress
Posted in Marketing, Search & Marketing
