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A Deeper Understanding of Inbound Marketing

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Start Building Effective Buyer Personas Today

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Perhaps the most important rule in life is to “know thyself”…well, in marketing it might be trumped by how well you know your prospective buyers. This might be the most important part of building an awesome positioning strategy that truly speaks to your buyers, and we know that when marketing plans are developed around the needs and desires Know your customersof your buyers you’ve got a strategy that will make everyone sit up and take notice. One notion that should be disabused from the start is that a buyer persona is just fine if it’s only skin deep. While it’s important to understand the basic demographics of your buyers, a truly effective buyer persona digs deep and cuts to the heart of what compels someone to make the ultimate decision to take the action you desire, whether that be filling out a form, downloading a resource, or the best outcome of all…making a purchase. Below are some simple tips that can help you get started in building effective buyer personas right now!

“A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents the real audience – an archetype of the target buyer. Marketers can use buyer personas to clarify the goals, concerns, preferences and decision process that are most relevant to their customers. Imagine how effective marketers could be if we would all stop making stuff up and start aligning our messages and programs with the way real people actually think.” Adele Revella from her Buyer Persona Blog.

Start with the basics:

Start with the low-hanging fruit. At the very least you should have a fairly easy time getting a handle on the basic demographics of your potential buyers. Basic facts like age, gender, ethnicity, education, geography, and occupation will give you a head start in developing buyer personas that will truly make a difference in your marketing plans.

Schedule some interviews:

Every expert on the subject of buyer personas including David Meerman Scott and Adele Revella stress that the most important step in developing an effective buyer persona is to conduct interviews with your buyers and potential buyers. For each profile you want to learn as much as possible. What are their goals and aspirations? What are their problems? What keeps them up at night? What kind of art do they enjoy? What media do they rely on for answers to their problems? What tools and resources do they use to excel at their jobs? What social networking sites do they belong to? What words and phrases do they use to describe your product? I’m sure you can come up with more, think outside the box and don’t be afraid to probe (without being creepy, please).

Segment your personas:

The classic question always seems to be…well, how many buyer personas should we have? Unfortunately there is no definitive answer to this question. You need to understand all of the key people that impact the decision process and develop a persona for each. Currently I work in a very competitive B2B technology environment and in our situation we broke our personas down into three groups…decision makers, key influencers, and champions.  This takes careful deliberation when you consider that the ultimate goal is to develop marketing messages that communicate with each group individually when possible. In his bestselling book The New Rules of Marketing & PR marketing guru David Meerman Scott discusses how a college might separate their buyer personas into parents who are helping their kids find the right school, different types of high school students (athletes, art students, etc.), and alumni they would like to solicit donations from.

Assign an image:

It helps to find an image or two that you feel captures the essence of that particular persona, obviously you’ll want to use your demographic data for this one. Having a visual representation for each buyer persona can really help when planning communication strategies that speak to the challenges and aspirations of your potential customers. Find images that closely resemble not just the demographic attributes, but also the psychographic ones as well. For instance, we market to owners and administrators of small healthcare offices that are not technically savvy, and can appear harried and unorganized. When it came time to find images that closely resembled our most likely buyers we found photos that match that description.

Write a short bio:

Scott also suggests writing a short, fictional biography for your different buyer personas that might help flesh out their stories a bit more. Touch on the reasons they might have for seeking out your product or service. What is motivating them? What are the market trends that would compel them to buy from you? How would they speak about you in everyday conversation with their family and friends? Have fun with it, let your imagination run wild and don’t worry about being silly.

Resources:

Adele Revella: www.buyerpersona.com

David Meerman Scott: www.webinknow.com

The New Rules of PR and Marketing by David Meerman Scott

What other resources can you share about building effective buyer personas? Leave a comment!

5 Reasons Your Organization Needs a Positioning Strategy Today

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Regardless of how big or small your organization is, whether you’re a profit generating juggernaut or a local non-profit struggling to make a difference, it’s imperative to have a clear positioning strategy in place. Not having a clear understanding of the position you want to occupy in your customer’s mind is akin to being set adrift in a rudderless ship. Without it you run the risk of looking more like one of those nine headed political panels on cable news, lots of people saying a whole lot of nothing, and going nowhere fast.  At its core, a strong positioning strategy is the backbone of an effective communication plan, when done correctly it can build consensus among key players in your team and help assure that everyone is playing from the same sheet of music. If you don’t have a strategy in place then today is a good day to get started, as wise folks say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago or today, so let’s look at five concrete benefits you’ll experience with a clear positioning strategy in place.

Find your position
Find Your Position

Save time and money:

Depending on the size of your organization the process of establishing a positioning strategy can often be a difficult one. It takes a lot of effort to build consensus among key players who are almost never in agreement about the personality of the organization, what the major roadblocks are, and most importantly what those unique and relevant qualities truly are. But rest assured, not having a clear positioning strategy in place will only assure that the band is out of tune. You will be spending time and money on marketing efforts without seizing the opportunity to build a clear position in your prospects mind. Awareness and reach aren’t enough anymore, and that’s especially true in a world where products/services are more complex and there is more competition than ever.

Know thyself (and your customers):

One of the first things you’ll need to do in this process is clearly establish who your ideal customers are, not just basic demographics (which you’ll need), you’ll need to dig deeper.  You can do this by asking some of the following questions:

What keeps them up at night?

What kind of art (if any) do they enjoy?

What movies do they like?

If they were to buy a particular kind of car, what kind would they buy?

I’m sure you can think of some others, get creative and get the group involved, this is a fun and interactive way to get to know your customers better.

Differentiate yourself from the competition:

The only way to do this is to solidify what makes your company/product/service unique and drive it home. In your discussion, pick your top competitors and examine what they are saying about themselves, you’ll often be surprised by how generic and similar they all sound and suddenly a light shines through the cracks. Jump in the void and seize the opportunity that your competitors aren’t taking. Don’t be generic, be bold, but make sure you can back up and verify the assertions you make about yourself, nothing is worse than showing up to a shootout with a gun and no bullets!

Get focused:

Having a clear positioning strategy will allow you to write copy that conveys a consistent message regardless of the medium. All too often even the best marketing pro can spin her wheels trying to find different ways to convey the same idea…(ie: what you do and why you can kick everyone else’s butt doing it). With a messaging matrix and a clear understanding of who your company is talking to, you can reduce a lot of wasted effort and allow your marketing team to focus their creative talents on finding new ways to communicate a consistent and effective message to your audience.

Find your parking space:

It helps think of your particular marketplace and competitive landscape as a crowded parking lot. Inevitably more and more cars are trolling the parking lot looking for the perfect empty space. Maybe it’s close to the entrance, maybe it’s closer to the exit, that’s up to them, but once that car is parked they will own that spot until they decide to leave (or get towed). Finding those USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) that are both unique and relevant to the market you serve will allow you to own one of those primo spots in the lot.

Why Inbound Marketing Matters

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People now shop and learn in a fundamentally different way than they had ten years ago, simply put they are turning to the Internet to seek out products and information, usually starting with Google or another search engine, or by seeking out advice from friends on social sites. Inbound marketing may be a relatively new concept to most, but with the rise of the Internet it has become something that every marketing professional must have a strong grasp on, otherwise you’ll be letting potential customers fly right by your offering for another. As consumers have become more adept at avoiding traditional “interruption” or outbound marketing, marketers and communication professionals have had to find new ways reaching and attracting customers and donors, effectively “pulling” people in by making the right strategic moves and creating lots of “remarkable” content, after that those relationships need to be cultivated effectively and genuinely.

[Read more…] about Why Inbound Marketing Matters

Sometimes we all have to apologize…

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Jim Joyce found himself between humanity and history last night when Armando Galarraga was just two outs away from pitching a perfect game.  He would have been the first Detroit Tiger in 100 years to do so!  Joyce was the first base umpire and he missed a crucial call when the first baseman clearly had his foot on the bag before the runner got there.  It was the epitome of human error, and with the sport’s reluctance to embrace instant replay Joyce was on his own to make the call with no safety net.  That the missed call was remarkable can’t be disputed, but what was even more amazing was what happened afterwords.  While the Tiger bench went ballistic, bursting out of the dug out with daggers drawn, Galarraga responded by getting ready for the next out so the team could win the game…he didn’t lose his cool, he didn’t threaten anyone or carry on like so many of the fools playing professional sports these days, he was certainly pissed but he handled himself with dignity and class.

Of course that’s not the end of the story, when the game was over Joyce viewed the video and realized his mistake right away and when faced with his own failure he stood up and apologized in such a genuine way that he took many people by surprise.  The question is…What can this teach us about apologizing when we’ve made a mistake?  I believe the best approach is simple, and essentially human…be genuine and let your apology be an apology.  We all make mistakes, in fact, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not making much of anything.  Apologizing is perhaps one of the most human things we can do to touch people and turn perceptions back in our favor.  When we own our mistakes, whether “we” might be an individual, company, or any other organization, a genuine apology is truly the best course of action.  Make it simple, make it real, and let your apology be an apology.

See Joyce’s apology here…

What is Noesis Marketing Blog?

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Noesis (nō-ˈe-sis) is defined as the psychological result of perception, learning and reasoning, in essence it’s the art of  reflective understanding in the pursuit of one’s own path.  I suppose it’s pretty esoteric stuff at the highest level, but the term can be applied to anything that we would like to understand more deeply, for me that is marketing and communications.  It’s what I do and what I love, especially when it’s done right and on a human level, providing value to those who seek it and avoiding those who don’t. Technology has enabled us to communicate with one another in a way that is fundamentally different than ever before, with the advent of social media, email, informative websites and of course blogs (also social media), we can communicate our messages to a targeted audience and provide real value.

While I’ll provide some “how to…” concepts from time to time, I’m looking to take a broader view of the world of marketing and communications by exploring what is working for organizations and what is not, whether it’s a non-profit, small business, large company or professional association.  How are stories being told?  What makes for compelling communications?  What tools and strategies are working and which have gone by the wayside?  I’d like to explore current trends and those on the horizon that will give you a heads up as to what is coming down the road and what you need to pay attention to in order to stay ahead of the curve.  I’ll explore the diversified world of interactive marketing including the world of SEO, blogging, social media, web development, email, lead nurturing, etc.  At the end of the day marketing and communications have the goal of developing singular relationships with customers, members, donors and so on.  Your messages have to be compelling and most of all relevant, but that’s just part of the game, once the content is developed you have to get the message out to your audience and that can be just as tricky as the creating the content itself.  In any event, I’ve gone on long enough…I hope you’ll find some value in the ideas I’ll explore on this blog, and that you might contribute to the conversation from time to time as well.