Marketsmith, Inc. - Marketsmith in the News

Think about your audience and what motivates them, and you will be engaged in the initial steps of persona marketing. What is persona marketing? Persona marketing is the identification of your customer beyond basic demographics, to reflect a more robust image of them in your catalog. In an effort to connect with various segments on a much deeper level while maintaining the mission of the catalog, variable printing persona marketing is employed by managing forms that are wrapped around the core product offering.

Picture two couples; one is a couple who has just sent their youngest child off to college and the other couple has two small children at home. Both walk into a big box retailer and look at the same exact patio set. Couple number one sees four older couples enjoying after-hours drinks, relaxing while a roast rotates on the grill’s rotisserie. The other couple envisions a table full of children eating hot dogs and running around the yard. How do you let both couples know the same patio set can satisfy each one’s mental picture? And, how do we as marketers know that this patio set conjures up those images for our customer base?

As our marketplaces become more fragmented and our customers have tens to hundreds of competitive choices across multiple channels, we need to communicate with our customers where they are, by what’s important to them, and by how they see what we are offering. By understanding who the customer is and what s/he wants, we can begin to shape a better understanding of how s/he consumes and how to talk to her/him in a way that rings true. Persona marketing gives us the tools to determine the different pools of customers we serve and how to communicate with them so they will respond positively.

This customer-centric mindset influences catalog presentation, web sites, email communication, purchased search terms, affiliate choices, etc.

There is a distinction between profiles and personas. Profiles are the data used to create the persona. Profiles are comprised of inferred analyses based on attitudinal and lifestyle research, with a bit of consumer-centric marketing intuition. Personas are the actual creation of a fictitious person built from a profile. Profiles can be identified by 1 to 5 variables such as age, income, martial status, home ownership, zip code, number of children in the household and age of those children. These data points are available from consortium databases and large demographic databases.

Understanding and defining the appropriate personas requires more than just looking at data points, but also conducting and evaluating customer research through the marketer’s lens of supposition, ideals and market assessments. In this way, we can identify an idea of a household and form a picture of that household - what they are interested in, where they spend their money, and how they spend their time.

As direct marketers, our strength lies is in our ability to tailor a message to a segment of people without it being costly, if done correctly. Persona marketing does not require creating 15 different books or 50 different email messages. It requires knowing who your customers are and engaging them on an emotional level through their first impression – that is, a book’s cover should speak to a particular persona, an email subject line should be geared to a particular persona, and a web site’s navigation path should be geared to different personas.

This approach is highly underutilized and has great potential. By employing different covers or emails to speak to segments differently, response should increase significantly. We performed a cover test on four personas for a client, and observed that targeted covers appear to provide a 5% lift in orders and a 15% increase in revenue for the 0-24 month customer segment.

To determine the optimal number of personas and the descriptions of each, we recommend testing to determine the right target profiles for each contact vehicle. Then, by understanding the profiles better through research, testing offers, and communication strategies, we can start to create the personas.

In working with personas, the magic is in identifying the right number to improve marketing results, but not so many that the cost outweighs the benefit. We would recommend identifying 3-6 personas, depending on the breadth of the product line and the customer demographics. Visual images, life stage descriptions, and emotion words are the best ways to communicate with personas. Persona marketing reaches people on a visceral level, not an intellectual one. The idea is to create a connection between the customer and the persona; that association will be instinctive. It will make the customer feel that this communication is speaking directly to her. Creating a better understanding of the customer and establishing this direct consumer relationship allows a fuller story to be communicated. By visualizing the needs of these constituents, one can merchandise much more effectively to them using catalog, emails, targeted search terms, selected affiliate sites, and direct mail.

The goal is to grow each persona group, recognizing that they will not all grow at the same rate, spend the same amount, or transact at the same level. Persona marketing offers the ability to speak to each group differently and treat them differently, with the goal of maximizing the potential of each group based upon what we know from data.

Marketsmith sees persona marketing as an essential element in taking conversion to another level. It calls for marketing, customer care and merchandise to work collectively at arriving at a complete understanding of customer groups and their households. Today, Marketsmith sees lifts in response from 7 to 17% when a well-researched persona marketing program is initiated. The program can also provide valuable information to the call center. When a customer calls to place an order, the CSR can identify the customer’s persona by the source code and respond in a more targeted fashion. Additionally, the customer service representative can distinguish between new and returning customers. Great data is the key to unlocking the mastery of persona marketing.

Call Monica C. Smith today to get a one-hour, no-cost road map of how you can get your brand involved with this essential, cutting edge form of marketing. You may reach Monica at msmith@marketsmithinc.com, or call her at 973.889.0006.