You've created your marketing personas: beautiful and now? If you have identified the importance and impact of these on your business (like 44% of B2B marketing managers) are you using them ingeniously?
Indeed, it is one thing to create them, it is another to use
them effectively. And this is often where the shoe pinches. Yet you had managed
to put in the same room, the sales representatives, the leaders, the marketing
and even the after-sales service to ensure an effective and exhaustive
description of your personas.
Here are 4 mistakes we typically see:
NB : Before reading this article, if you have not yet
created your buyers personas (or marketing persona), or if you do not yet
understand the interest for your business, we invite you to download our guide
for free here :
My beautiful marketing persona: a google doc lost deep in my google drive
We often put a lots of energy into creating our personas.
This is a fundamental step in a marketing strategy because targeting cold
prospects corresponding to your personas, with contextualized content and
created for them is 58% more effective than targeting your hot prospects with
non-contextualized content.
However, over time, they end up becoming a simple google doc
among many that one will consult very rarely, if not briefly by sharing it with
the new collaborator who has just arrived.
This is a big mistake.
Indeed, each type of content is addressed (or should) to one of your personas
. But how can you claim to know him if you painted his portrait years ago and
never looked at him again?
So I grant you, if you are in regular contact with your
customers, you probably don't feel the need to come back every time (besides
you don't).
On the other hand, reading for a few minutes once a month or
quarter will allow you to realize that your persona is evolving and that he has
other expectations and especially new problems to solve.
My beautiful marketing persona: frozen in 2014
You created your personas in 2014, you remember them like it
was yesterday. Except that yesterday, the market, the needs, the issues, the
tools were different. Just like your 2014 offer (well I hope for your
business), your personas have evolved!
It is not intended to remain frozen on the contrary. And
even if Jean-Pierre your best salesman claims nothing has changed, it probably
isn't as close to reality as he wants to let it hear.
65% of businesses that have updated their personas in the
past 6 months have exceeded their leads and revenue goals .
Remember that this is a typical profile based on human
behavior. And as humans, we never stop evolving, influenced by our environment,
our values, our culture, our stages of life, our intrinsic and extrinsic events
etc.
Modifying your personas means anticipating, analyzing and
understanding what are its new issues, desires, needs and challenges.
And since 2014 many things have changed (and will continue
to evolve). In 2014, a company had 6 competitors on average. It is 18 competitors
that it must face in 2019… (Hubspot Research). Most sectors are affected .
On the other hand, do you remember the appearance of
Facebook (admittedly 15 years ago now)? Our parents did not understand the
point. They are now the ones who share quotes like “carpe diem”, photos of a
cat or of their garden on their wall…
Locally, and like what's happening around the world, do you
remember Netflix, Burger King or Run Market in 2014? No ? Neither did we,
because that did not exist.
There had also been no yellow vests, or the covid-19 crisis
... There was no Thomas Cook, Toys' R Us and many other behemoths on the floor.
And our unlimited operator subscriptions cost a whopping 99 € all inclusive in
unlimited, without 4G.
All of this has a definite influence on the behavior of your
prospects that you must take into account.
In short, our world is changing, why would your personas
remain frozen? And don't come and tell us that your sector is spared, that you
are in a niche where you are a leader and that Amazon is not interested in your
“too complex” business.
My beautiful marketing persona: I know it exists, but when should I consult
it?
Ok your personas exist. But do you really understands the
meaning and their purpose? If you have been able to determine how important
their role is, do you have the right methodology to take advantage of them?
Indeed, we often assume that we know our personas perfectly.
However, a quick reading, before writing your next article,
can give you several ideas: what word or argument to use, what tone would be
the most suitable etc.
In fact, we never know enough about our personas until we
are able to see the world as it sees it.
So yes, it's a bit theoretical as a concept, but the idea is
there: the more you understand it , the more your content will be relevant ,
the more results you will have .
We therefore strongly invite you to read your persona sheet
for a few minutes before creating your next content or even your posts on your
networks.
Believe us, these few minutes of your time will ultimately
make the difference.
My beautiful marketing personas: I have 3 ad vitam æternam and that will
never change!
Take our case. When the agency was create in 2015, we
identified 4 distinct personas.
5 years later, the perception that we had has constantly
evolved, nurtured by our Retex (or feedback) and different interactions with
multiple players in our market.
For example, over time we have divided our main persona into
3 sub-personas based on their professional background . Why ? Because we have
detected that the arguments to use differ depending on this sensitivity.
Likewise, new offers have enriched our services.
Logical, you will tell me, but for all that, it is never
easy to adopt and seriously explore this iterative approach.
As a player in the digital transformation of sales,
marketing and customer experience, we also had to deal with other CODIR / COMEX
contacts who were not in the scope of the start, rather very “marketing”.
Another example, after starting to train our clients on CRM,
marketing automation, Inbound marketing, content, sales enablement and so on,
many HRDs contacted us to train their marketing / sales department as well as
so that we can help them define and implement their employer brand or their
talent attraction strategy.