Sep 22, 2016 12:59:21 PM
Throughout our series so far, we have discussed the many reasons to develop personas for more effective and efficient marketing and product management, and several elements of a tactical plan to create them. What we have not addressed, however, is the optimal way to engage with different departments and functions within your organization to develop these personas.
This is an important consideration, one that is frequently left out of the “how to” manuals. While it is easier to find step-by-step instructions for creating personas (with varying degrees of success) it is much harder to find sensible, practical methods of navigating through the corporate environment to complete a persona development project.
Keeping this in mind, here is a simple plan.
1. Make the case for personas - to everyone you encounter
The first step is to become a walking billboard for the reasons personas are important to marketing and product management success. To bolster your case, consider the arguments below:
Shoppers are More Educated
It is clear shoppers of nearly every kind, looking for everything from a mobile phone to consulting services, are now seeking information of all kinds to become better educated about their needs and what is available from a number of suppliers. This means companies who offer goods and services have an unprecedented opportunity – to provide these shoppers content that matches their desires and needs, and to become leaders in the hearts and minds of their customers.
Content Needs to be Written for your Audiences; There is Competition for their Attention
Getting the attention of customers swimming through a sea of information overload requires that they be given materials tailored, as well as they can be, to their individual needs and tastes - but how do you decide which content to create? While we generally know what we want to say about our products and services, we are less confident about which feature or benefit is most important. Further, our intuition tells us that what is important to one group of customers may not be as important to other customers, and vice-versa.
The answer is to determine which members of your target audience need to 1) hear different core messages, and 2) consume different content types, and 3) make use of and/or decisions about your products and services differently through a market research effort designed to segment your audience based on these factors. Through this initial segmentation process, you will find the basic framework required to generate your marketing personas. In addition, your use of a rigorous marketing research process will allow your resulting personas to be “backed by science.”
Moving on to Creating Your Personas
Once you have made your case, you need to reinforce the second tenant of your argument:
2. You can’t develop the personas without your coworkers’ essential input
I will not be one to advocate flattery; it is never a good idea to fabricate reasons why someone should do something for vanity’s sake alone. That said, there is nothing wrong with coming clean about the truth; that they have knowledge which will be very helpful to your persona development effort.
Sales people and customer support are two excellent resources for this effort, as they obviously know your company’s customers best. Begin by sharing a short list of hypotheses with them regarding your personas, and again as a reminder, make sure they know it is a favor for you.
Of course, you are armed with your reasons for creating personas in the first place, and have probably already discussed them in the lead up to your asking for help.
You may ask, “But what if they play politics and won’t help?” Two thoughts here; first, one of the best ways to increase someone’s fondness of you is to ask them for a favor. See this Wikipedia article for more details on how the Ben Franklin Effect works.
3. Share data points with your coworkers
After you have your team members aligned to assist you in your efforts, you will need to surface the scientifically-derived evidence which supports your hypotheses and the results of any additional research you have commissioned to support the creation of your personas. Once you have this information, a bit of work is involved in translating your data to actual statements which support your hypotheses.
For example, you are an oil change service company and you have just finished commissioning research for an attitudinal segmentation of your audience and the different reasons why they get their oil changed. What you have found is the following:
• 40% your audience chooses their oil change provider by sheer speed and convenience. The further along the path of quickness and ease, the better.
• 30% of your audience chooses their oil change provider based on their expertise; the more knowledgeable they are about your car, the more suitable they are for your purposes.
• 25% choose their oil change provider based on safety. They choose the option that makes them feel safest.
This means you have three groups to communicate with based on these themes alone, but a useful next step would be to compare how these attitudes compare to the genders and age groups. You may find the following:
• Mothers with young children are more likely to be safety focused.
• Men aged 24-35 are most likely to be speed and convenience focused.
Through sharing this information with your coworkers, you put them in an advantageous position. They have data to back up their efforts, and you have the benefit of their buy-in and experience.
This may all seem overly simplified, but keep in mind, the usual way this is done is by not engaging others in the development process and then telling them what you learned after you are done. While this is normal, it is not most effective or well-received.
First, when you come out with your own (or your marketing department’s own) way of classifying your customers and tell your sales people to use it, you are implicitly telling them that you know more about their customers than they do. This is likely to get them to find a reason to challenge your assertions.
Second, you have missed out on the best reason why they should use personas: because they helped to create them. Their ownership will make them defenders of the personas, while their lack of involvement will turn them against your research findings, and land them on the side of the naysayers.
Make sure you make allies of the co-workers who know the most about your customers - involve them in the process of persona development.
