Persona-centric marketing helps organizations realize higher conversion rates and customer retention, but making the shift from product and service marketing to personas is not always easy. In this podcast, we explain what persona-centric marketing is, and how you can overcome the 6 common challenges faced by organizations who try to adopt persona-centric practices.
In this episode, we discuss…
What is Persona-Centric Marketing? (3:01 – 4:48)
- Persona-centric marketing is focusing on meeting the needs of the prospect or customer at a personalized level based on the information found in a persona: demographics, psychographics and where they are in the customer journey.
- Benefits:
- More clarity or focus in the production of content or creative
- Higher conversion rates or close rates because the content is personalized for that prospect
- Higher customer retention because our personalized marketing makes audience members feel like they belong
- Segmenting our audience through personas means the data we get back out will also be segmented
6 Challenges Faced by Organizations Trying To Adopt Persona-Centric Practices (4:50 – 13:53)
1. No one is taking the reigns to make it happen
- Solution: Become the change agent, even if the shift to personas doesn’t extend beyond your department
- Back up your work by referencing thought leaders who are in support of this shift like Brian Solis, Joseph Jaffe, Kerry Bodine, Chip Bell and Adele Revella
2. There is no motivation or sense of urgency to get this going
- Solution: Paint two pictures of the organization: one that shows what is broken now, and one of how things could look in the Utopian future.
- The broken picture highlights key elements of the customer journey that would benefit from persona-centricity.
- Ex: Moments that create a poor customer experience
- The Utopian future shows how the customer experience would improve as a result of changes to the customer journey and how that translates into lower customer acquisition dollars, higher customer retention etc.
3. The organization is siloed because of different business lines, or because of different parts of the customer journey
- Solution: Focus on communication. Make other groups in the organization aware of the work you’re doing and invite them to participate early and often.
4. We don’t have buy-in from the C-Suite
- Solution: Start with a briefing at the C-Suite level. Provide case studies from other thought leaders. Make the personas and customer journeys visual and easy to understand.
5. There is a gap in education, training or awareness
- Solution: Turn personas into a visual display for the entire team to see and make sure company-wide reporting includes references to the personas and customer journey. Also include references to education materials.
6. There are hurdles to maintaining momentum
- Solution: Remember that persona-centric marketing can be phased in over time. It doesn’t need to be done all at once.
- Focus on transforming new content or creative with personas
- When time allows, refresh old or existing content in small chunks over time
For more information on the charity in this episode, please visit Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.
The Iterative Marketing Podcast, a production of Brilliant Metrics, ran from February 2016 to September 2017. Music by SeaStock Audio.
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