Personas In Search- SMX West- FutureNow, Inc.

Persona Models In Search Marketing Brian Bond VP Marketing & Product FutureNow, Inc.

Power of Personas

The Critical Element of Personas Using Personas to Plan Your Marketing

Oh, The Humanity!

Personas:

Stand-ins in for your Visitors

Power of a Personas Power to Create Deep Empathy Personality, Wants, Fears, Motivations, Aspirations, etc.

Which can make them “Debate Enders” Which makes them debate enders

And help develop better products and services

Personas represent your audience so you can create a campaign that speaks to your audience

Image if… You had to write a letter to a crowd…

Now write that letter to someone you’ve heard of or see, but don’t know personally… Image if…

Image if… Now write that letter your closest friend…

The Most Important Element of a Persona for Campaign/Content Planning? Josephine was born the eldest of five children. Being the only girl, Josephine was somewhat thrust in to a nurturing/mothering role as she grew up. This experience throughout her life, combined with the strong relationship she shared with her parents during her childhood has instilled a deep respect and love of relationships and the connections between people. For Josephine, notions of family are very important and this is reflected in her day to day life. She is not a woman who acts purely for herself. Making others happy is her own path to happiness. While Josephine's family is not wealthy, Andrew's family is more than happy with their son's decision. The Bardot name is an old one and Andrew's parents are besotted with the generous and unassuming Josephine. The wedding is set for January the following year leaving six months to organize the big day. One of the constants in Josephine's life has always been her somewhat domineering mother Francine. Far from a negative aspect of Josephine's life, Francine's influence is one born of love for her daughter. Francine recognized that for all her strengths, taking action is not one her daughter is possessed of. Francine is ecstatic about the upcoming wedding as she sees this as a great opportunity for Josephine to have the kind of wedding Francine had always wanted for herself. She is also a little concerned that if Josephine is left to her own devices, things will not get organized and the wedding will be a failure. Fearful of her daughter's wedding not being all it can be, Josephine voluntarily takes on the role of organizer of the big day. While her daughter is the person with the ultimate say in what eventually happens, Francine wants to make sure that Josephine is in the best possible position to make those decisions. Josephine is very much aware of the way her mother views the wedding as a mechanism to live out her own fantasy wedding. For Josephine the wedding is less about her and more about those important to her taking part in and experiencing the joy of this union. Considering the large part Francine has played in her life, Josephine has a strong desire to fulfill her mother's wishes as well as her own. Josephine happily accepts her mother's assistance and shares her mother's desire for the wedding to have be of a traditional nature. A big feature of the wedding in the eyes of both women is the wedding cake, its existence symbolizing all that is important about the union of Josephine and Andrew. The whole family agrees to 'kick-in' to ensure the wedding is something really special and that extends to the cake. Josephine Bardot

Insight Empathy Todd “ The Tech Guy” Male 25-35 Years Old Clicks on (X) Todd Hill Spontaneous Competitive Motivated by: Needs: Fears: Etc. Etc

Motivations and buying modes Spontaneous Competitive Humanistic Methodical Emotion Time High Low Fast Deliberate

Some is better than None… More is better than Some…

All good but its how you use them that gives them power

We’re talking scent trails….

- Through Ads

- Through Landing Pages

- Through The Site

- Through Conversion

It’s about what you could have sold

“… a computer can tell you down to the last dime what you've sold. But it can never tell you how much you could have sold…”

Sam Walton,

founder of Wal-Mart

Move-Forward-Until-Found Rule

Jared Spool: (from the article The Right Trigger Words)

“ a web page can do only one of two things:

1) either it contains the content the user wants

2) or it contains the links to get them to the content they want.

If a page doesn't follow this rule, then the users stop clicking ...”

In Action

Pick the persona you want to start with.

Refresh yourself with their needs, motivations, wants, fears, limitations, etc

Become empathetic to that persona – really put yourself in your head.

Too hard? Get a team together to act the parts… but be careful in your casting choices

In Action

Now start asking yourself three questions:

Which persona is participating? Todd

My business, what profitable actions do I want Todd to take?

As Todd , what questions do I have and what actions do I want to take before I do that action.

WebEx.com Persona Driven Campaign Example

WebEx Persona 3/6 Free Trial Scenario

Diane Austin

Senior Operations Manager

Type: Competitive, ENTP

“ I'm always looking for ways to keep this company from falling behind the times, I wish this company would realize how important that is. They probably won't until I am gone. ”

Knowledge

Risk

Need

Consensus

Dive Deeper: Diane Austin

Diane Embraces

ROI

Streamlined info, cut to the chase

Facts that establish her as an expert on the subject at hand

Results

Experience with the product

Sparring during the sales process, needs to win, needs to feel smarter

Her status

Diane Avoids

Happy talk, airy fairy, small talk, blowing smoke

Incompetent people

Excuses

Ambiguity

Emotional arguments

Dive Deeper: Diane Austin

Diane Needs

The perfect solution

A well known brand goes a long way

Never to feel outsmarted by the technology

She wants the best deal she can get, prides herself on getting it (may play your company against another company)

Reliability

Proactive customer service

Motivations

Will this help prove my value to this company

Prides herself on knowing more than IT department

Seeks out new technology that will help move co. forward

Needs to know that it works, know that its cutting edge

Wants to be out in front of her colleagues in other businesses

Wants to own her own business someday

Thinks she is under paid and under appreciated

Diane’s Driving Point Official WebEx Site www.webex.com WebEx is the leader in web meetings - Fast. Easy. Secure. Try Free Now!

Diane’s Entry Point

Content For Diane

Convincing Diane

Overstock.com Movie Category Page

Spontaneous seek top sellers & new releases

Humanistics care about reviews

Methodicals find by genre

Competitives search by actor, title, etc.

Overstock.com Buy today and save up to 70% off of retail prices on Top 100 Movies Overstock.com Todd

33% reduction in abandonment

I asked FutureNow to do a study of our web site.... found something we had to fix immediately.... We fixed it that night, and saw an immediate 5% lift in our sales . - Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com $65k in Additional Daily Sales

Summary