Personas and Content Personalization

Personas and Content PersonalizationAs Chris and Gail approached our table by the window he
was saying,” So I need to better understand how to get to personas that sell.”

Rick looked up and said, “Ask.”

Gail scolded him, “You’re a big help!”

Rick replied, “That is the way you build a
persona. Talk to someone in the target audience and listen to how they describe
themselves, the problems they are trying to solve and how they see your product
or service. Find out what objections they had ot it initially and most
importantly why they bought.”

Y’all gonna have to parse that posie to find out how to
be convincing though,” said Rob.

“Rob,” I asked, “ By ‘parse that posie’ do you mean
figure out the differences between the problem, their objections and the reason
they bought?”

“Sho nuff, Fletch. The best brands all know what those
differences are. They may not be able to state them as clearly as I like but they
know
. Mo’ importantly, they never stop asking and listening.”

“For example,” said Chris.

“I saw one the other day that is right up your alley,
Sgt. Friday,” Rob said with a wink. These good ‘ol boys were introducing a new
on-line meeting product. The intro was doing well, making them six figure
income overnight. They looked at the results and realized they were selling
almost 5% of the folks they connected with via e-mail.

Yeah, I thought that would impress you. But they looked
at that success and asked themselves why they didn’t get more of the folks that
had clicked through. So they did a survey. They asked suspects that had made
contact why they didn’t buy. Twarn’t fancy. Just a single open ended question.

What they found was that the suspects that had become
contacts couldn’t be prospects because they only met two of Fletch’s criteria
for a prospect:

          They had a
problem that the product could solve.

          They were
the ones that could authorize the purchase

          But they
didn’t want a single lump sum payment

Over a third of the survey respondents told them that.
Many of them suggested keeping the same price but allowing payment in three
installments.”

Kate said, “Don’t tell me. From that survey they figured
out the additional potential prospects, even thought they were successful had
tight cash flow and were really concerned how quickly the ROI would kick in.”

“Give that chile a kewpie doll,” Rob said. “Those good
ol’ boys went back to that bunch and increased their sales by 30%!

Chris said, so the best way to build personas that buy is
to listen to what they have to say and that includes doing surveys?”

“Right” I said. “And like Bubba said, ‘Parse them
Posies’. I’ll bet the test he was talking about uncovered some other things as
well.”

“And that is the posie,” said Rob. As much as we talk
about being singular it is just as important to understand that people’s
opinions about our products and services are just not a single blossom but
rather more like a bouquet. If they are early on in the romance the bouquet has
multiple flowers but as they become brand advocates the bouquet becomes one
variety or one color or a single dominant bloom.”


Can you describe the differences between your suspects,
contacts, prospects and clients? How do you “parse the posies”?