Twenty-One: Choosing Personas
Sorting the customers out into segments and developing personas is a good start, but just a start: to get results from these practices, the data must be put to use rather than merely admired and filed away. That is to say that the data about personas must be translated into data about behaviors.
- Demographics are useful in determining buying behavior. When a rural 24-year-old man with an income of $38,000 seeks to purchase an engagement ring, not only can he afford less, but he also behaves differently than an urban 35-year-old who makes $125,000 a year.
- Psychographics can identify the way that people shop. A spontaneous and methodical customer wills shop in different ways, and a competitive will be motivated by different messages than a humanistic.
- Topology considers the knowledge, need, risk, and consensus of each shopper that guides us from supporting shopping behavior to supporting buying behavior
The consolidation of all three factors enables us to have a detailed understanding of the motivation of each group of consumers, represented by a persona. Leveraging this motivation is the "crown jewel" or marketing.
Unfortunately, people who are eager to take action go off half-cocked. They barely understand the concept of personas and begin compiling them, and then recognize that they didn't pay attention long enough to know what to do once they have created them. As a result, firms than have experimented with personas have the perception that they don't work - ignoring, or perhaps ashamed to admit, that the problem is that the firm did not work them properly.
"How Many Personas?"
In the authors' experience, people are eager to pin down an exact number of personas they should use to be effective, but this derives from the nature of the product and the market. The qick-and-dirty answer is "at least two" to separate the difference between shopping and buying behavior, but even this assumes that customers have identical personalities and motivations.
A more specific answer is that you must first discover how many different types of customer your brand serves, then decide which of these types can be profitably served. There's little point in creating an elaborate plan to encourage sales from a sector that contributes 1% of your revenue. (EN: That is assuming that changing your strategy for that sector would not significantly increase results, which may hold true, and improving rather than abandoning in a sector in which historical results are low could be a great potential for profit.)
Said another way, you need at least as many personas as you have market segments - and that's provided the segments are clearly enough defined. If you lump all "restaurant o" into one segment, chances are a single persona is not specific enough to be actionable.
At the same time, the number must not become unwieldy. The authors speak to a client who had defined 42 personals, each of which contributed a fragment of the firm's revenue. It took "several weeks" of investigation and refinement to knock it down to six personas, each of which had a significant contribution.
There's a bit more waffling still on a number - and they eventually arrive at the range of three to seven, below which you may not be serving the unique needs and interests of a segment, above which you may find it unwieldy to serve each persona well.
Sources of Insight
An excellent source of insight into the customers are the front-line employees who serve them, primarily sales and customer service. These employees have daily encounters with them and can relate common questions and concerns.
Market research can be helpful, but due to various factors (poor memory, confabulation etc.) a more useful approach is to search the Internet, where people who are in the buying process voice questions and concerns in social media, blogs, discussion groups, and the like.
Keywords Reveal Intent
Search engine marketing, the practice of identifying common keywords in order to buy advertising associated to them, is highly competitive - which is an entirely separate matter than the authors intend to discuss. They can't refrain from mentioning they find it of questionable value - loading your site with attention-getting phrases doesn't mean you will be relevant to the needs of the buyer.
Keyword research determines the words and phrases a prospect might enter when searching for a product, and discovers which search results got the most clicks from people searching for specific phrases.
That is to say that a search marketer who wants attention for anyone searching for "diamonds" will get customers looking for "cheap diamonds" and "stylish diamonds" and "diamond rings" as well as "diamond watches" - but once they click through they may not find the advertiser's site to be relevant to their actual needs.
And this is the value of search engine marketing: you can understand a little more about what a customer is looking for in a product - not to grab their immediate attention, but to consider the questions that might be asked when the customer enters your site. After all, when a customer uses a search engine, it's implicit that they are looking for an answer to a question.
In terms of personas, you may be able to use search keywords to segment your market and develop different personas based on the qualities prospects are seeking.
Finding the Triggers
The author subscribes to the notion of "trigger words," which are different to keywords for search engines. A trigger word matches information the customer is looking for in the context of a message or other information.
For example, a customer looking for a "silver cleaner" will pay attention to an advertisement for a silver cleaner and may not pay attention to one for a "silver polish" or "tarnish remover."
This is where SEO falls sort: matching the keywords that a user will enter into a search engine will get them to visit your site, but failing to use those same terms as trigger words in the context of the site may lead him to conclude that your product is not what he's looking for and leave.
Ideally, the two should be in synch, but is a fairly common practice for search engine marketers to embed keywords in hidden text that search engines read, but fail to include them as trigger words in page content. As a result, their ads deliver visitors to the site who leave without buying.
There is an example of some advertising copy that uses language that seems a bit unusual, but which nonetheless was successful because it matched exactly the phrase that described the shopper's desired outcome.
Keywords Indicate Readiness
The authors suggest that specificity of search keywords may be an indicator of the user's place in the buying process: an individual searching for a "big screen TV" is more likely to be early in the process whereas one searching for a "Sony XBR Plasma TV" is likely closer to making a purchase. The authors deduce this because the second shopper has already evaluated their needs and compared different models.
Companies eager for a fast sale may focus on the shopper who is closer to buying - but are limited in the approach they can take: the model has been decided, and they can now only focus on the price and delivery options.
It may take a bit more time to work the first prospect into a sale, but if you can provide assistance and help her identify a model, she may likely buy from you without looking around for another vendor who might offer it at a lower price.
(EN: This speaks to a shopping behavior specific to the older generations - Silent and Boomer generations - who focus more on the humanistic pattern of valuing a salesman who works hard to make a sale, and who are inclined to reward their work and feel guilty if they buy from someone else.)
Sorting Motivations and Modalities
Just because you can identify a segment and create a persona doesn't mean it is worthwhile. Many firms decide to reject the business of the people who are searching for the cheapest product - they might be easily convinced by a deal, but the firm must sacrifice profit to get their one-time business and they are unlikely to become regular or loyal customers.
It's a perfectly legitimate, and even wise, strategy to choose your customers with some discretion, favoring those who provide greater profit and leaving the customers who provide the least revenue and cost the most in expenses to your competition.