Learn different methods for introducing and engaging an important marketing function — customer personas. Dr. Chicotsky will offer multiple assignments that include experiential learning principles and other approaches that have propelled students’ career readiness and inspired student communities.

1. TCU
Neeley
School
of
Business Dr. Brandon Chicotsky, Assistant Professor of
Professional Practice in Marketing
The Impact of Teaching
Customer Personas

2. The Buyer
Persona
A representation of a marketer’s market
segment
A Buyer Persona helps to give tangibles
a face to the target market

3. Forming the buyer persona
A good buyer persona should include enough
information to describe a real person — think
of your neighbor, one of your past instructors,
or a peer
Keep in mind: the buyer persona should be based
on real research

4. When creating a buyer persona:
Pain points Fun facts
General demographic
information
Goals, Values, Challenges
Sources of information
A day in the life

6. Review
There are many ways to segment consumers
The goal is create a meaningful target market
A buyer persona is a valuable tool to
understand your consumers better.

16. Situated Learning Theory
(Lave & Wenger, 1991)
Learning occurs in real-life, hands-on situations,
which can be described as “learning by doing.”

17. SCORE model of student engagement proposed by
Strong, Silver, and Robinson (1995).
The “R” in SCORE—“Relationships” (the need for
involvement with others)”—was an area for improvement.

18. ● Success (the need for mastery)
● Curiosity (the need for understanding)
● Originality (the need for self-expression)
● Relationships (the need for involvement with others)

19. MEASURES VARIED
Multiple conditions include “perceptions of academic challenge, learning
with peers, experiences with faculty, campus environment, participation,
motivation, grades, self-efficacy, and more” (Balwant, Birdi, Stephan, &
Topakas, 2019).

20. Live Chat Prompts
● Identify customer persona
attributes
● Prompts for each category
Followed by Design Thinking Exercise

22. Media Skim
● Dive into popular press sites
focused on marketing (e.g.,
Digiday, The Drum, and AdAge).
● Teams identify customer personas.
Explain the “Why”

23. Let’s do
a quick skim.
ThinkWithGoogle.com

24. Let’s do
a quick skim.
AdWeek.com
“Media Week”

25. Let’s do
a quick skim.
MarketingWeek.com/Market-Research

26. Workshop Example
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V03VuykZR6cDdUW1tbJgwV6QmhSrG5cq/
edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110078343717474152618&rtpof=true&sd=true

27. There are inflections with
customer personas …
We have covered the buyer persona … then we can introduce
the constructive principles of a brand persona and
follower personas.

28. Your Personal Brand | Start with Why
● A brand is a relationship + reputation.
● A brand can be strategically constructed and managed.
● A brand should have purpose, not just attributes.

29. Your Personal Brand | Start with Why
Break into groups and identify the following pain points:
● Your professional purpose (in the broad marketplace).
● Your specific industry’s pain points.
● Your stakeholders’ purpose (professionals in your orbit).
● Your stakeholders’ pain.
● Your purpose in the context of your firm.
● Your pain in the context of your specific role.

30. Brand management involves updating,
communicating, and engaging.
Brand relationships involve customer perception,
value assessments, and purpose alignment.

31. Perceived and realized.
Brand value is measured through “reach”, engagements,
sentiment scores, transactions, and an ongoing decision
journey (e.g., retention).
Trust
Increased Value
Confidence
Implications
of
Brands
Garnered among organizational stakeholders.
Conveyed through brand positioning, communication ethic, visible
signals (e.g., attire), and professional poise.
Leading to more engagement.
Conveyed through credible and authentic stories.
Also conveyed through substantiated studies, opinion
leader commentary, and brand associations.

32. A phenomenon of commonalities among pitching
communities provides pathways for buyers, investors, or
capital allocators to engage and increase deal flow
(Spigel, 2017).
Brand relatedness increases the likelihood of favorable
relationships and collaboration among business
exchanges (Pandya & Leblang, 2011).

33. Brand equity is defined
by marketing effects
attributable to the
brand (Keller, 1993).

34. Traditional Focus:
Organizational
Brands
New Phenomena:
Individuals
Representing Brands

40. What is a brand …
individually and organizationally?

41. Brand Equity

47. Brand Extension
Organizational reputation management
Brand associations
Values alignment
Endeavor-seeking

48. Brand Equity
Dr. Kevin Keller,
Dartmouth
Professor Emeritus
Dr. David Aaker,
UC-Berkeley

49. Social Identity Theory
Applied to analyses of sports
media (Trepte, 2006) and
social media (Barker, 2009).
H. Tajfel J. Turner

50. Social Capital
Pierre Bourdieu
1930-2002
Dr. Susan Fiske,
Princeton

51. Herskovitz and Crystal, 2010
● Recognizably human traits.
Carlson, Donavan and Cumiskey, 2009
● Associations may lead to meaningful relationships.
Sussan, 2013
● May represent personalities.

52. 1839: The world’s first
“selfie” is taken by
amateur chemist and
photography
enthusiast Robert
Cornelius

55. 4Ps are evolving
into the 4Es

58. Web3 and
why it matters
“Productization” in an
emerging marketplace
of new economic
standards [e.g., ERC20
and ERC721 (NFTs)]

59. Customer
Decision
Journey (CDJ)

65. Design Thinking
● Customer Decision Journey
Mapping
Present to the Class

66. KPI Formulas
In your career, you will see these again ...

67. Firstly, what KPIs might be relevant?

68. ● Leads
● Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
● Sales qualified lead (SQL)
● Customer lifetime value (CLV)
● Sales growth

69. More KPIs
● Cost of customer acquisition (CAC or COCA): marketing investment / # of customers acquired.
● Sales team response time.
● Website lead and website traffic ratio.
● Website Lead to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Ratio
● MQL to SQL Ratio
● SQL to Quote Ratio
● Quoted to Closed Customer Ratio
● Website Traffic
● Social Media Reach and Engagement
● Email Marketing Performance
● Inbound Link Building
● Landing Page Conversions

70. ● Value of a Customer: CAC, CLV (and ratio between the
two)
○ CAC: [(All Sales Expenses + All Marketing Expenses) /
Number of New Customers]
○ CLV: [Average Revenue per User (ARPU) / Monthly
Churn Rate]
● CLV to CAC Ratio: [Lifetime Value / Customer Acquisition
Cost]
○ Investors likely care most about this metric

71. ● Customer Churn
○ Monthly recurring revenue churn percent: [Churned
MRR / Previous Month's MRR]
● Account Churn Rate
○ [(# Customers at Start of Month - # Customers at the
End of Month) / # Customers at Start of Month]

72. ● Net Revenue Loss (AKA: Revenue Churn Rate RCR: [((MRR at Start of Month - MRR
at End of Month) - MRR in Upgrades During Month) / MRR at Start of Month]
● Revenue Renewal Rate: [(MRR Up for the Renewal at Beginning of Month - MRR Not
Renewed at the End of Month)/MRR Up for Renewal at Beginning of Month]

73. Tools of the Trade

74. Marketing Stack
Links shared on Discord

75. “Marketers regularly
use over 100 software
programs.”
- Scott Brinker
Link shared on Discord. Note,
this is a retrospective.

76. Intercom + Marketo (2022) “Standards” for Building a
Marketing Technology Stack
● Google Ads (AdRoll, Quantcast, Basis) - ad tech
● Demandbase (Terminus, RollWorks) - ad tech
● Unbounce (Instapage, GetResponse) - landing page builder
● Sprout Social (Buffer, Sprinklr, Hootsuite, MeetEdgar) - social
management
● WordPress (Ghost, Medium, Drupal, Contentful) - Content
Management System
● Ahrefs (SEMrush, Moz, Conductor) - SEO
● Zoom (GoToMeeting, WebEx, Blue Jeans) - Webinars
● MadKudu (Salespanel, Infer, ActiveCampaign) - lead scoring
● Marketo (Intercom) - customer engagement and lead generation
● Clearbit (ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Cognism) - data
enrichment
● HubSpot (Pardot/Salesforce, Sharpspring,
Eloqua, Customer.io) - marketing automation
● Outreach.io (SalesLoft) - sales engagement
● Aircall.io (Dialpad, Talkdesk) - cloud calling
● Google Analytics (Firebase, Mixpanel, Heap)
- web analytics
● Tableau (Microsoft BI, Looker, Domo) -
business intelligence
● LeanData (Bizible, BrightFunnel) - lead
management
● Segment (Tealium, mParticle) - customer data
infrastructure
● Heap (Adobe Analytics) - product analytics
● Hotjar (Crazy Egg, FullStory, Quantium
Metric) - conversion rate optimization
● Optimizely (Unbounce, Instapage) -
conversion rate optimization

78. COURSE
CLIENTS

79. Full-Time Faculty
Appointment
Focused on integrating course clients with business curricula.

80. A clinical professorship focused
on instructional design and
experiential learning

81. Participated in Post-Production Marketing
Solved real-time, active problems and contributed to marketing and advertising campaigns.

82. Participated in Brand Building
Worked directly with marketing managers

83. As COVID began to
emerge (prior to
the 2020
shutdown), we
moved projects
into local company
boardrooms

84. Benefits to the
students and
institution
Advancement
(fundraising) and
activation of
alumni.
Career Services:
new relationships
with companies.
Reputation boost
and amplified
branding among
leading
companies.
Experiential
learning and
industry insights
for students with
measurable
outcomes.
Expanded
influencer
network for the
institution and
students.
Professional
development
training +
logistics
management
training (for
interns).

85. COURSE CLIENTS: Implementation Plan
● Conceptualize the course client project(s).
● Identify organizational facilitator of course clients (e.g., The Austral Group)
● Formulate measurement tool beyond course evaluations.
● Design intervals and final project (e.g., pitch + marketing plan).
● Design rubric, feedback mechanism, and scoring plan.
● Incorporate in-class workshop assignments and guest lectures.
● Department clearance.
● Execution and evaluation.
● Debrief and return to instructional design to inform future courses.

86. Industry
Resource Lists

87. Helpful Marketing
Databases
Passport Global Market Information Database
MarketingWeek.com/Market-Research
Datasearch.Research.Google.com
Library.tcu.edu/db-mergent.asp
Meta Blueprint (case studies)
*Business Source Complete
*SRDS Media Solutions
ThinkWithGoogle.com
*MRI Simmons
sci-hub.hkvisa.net
MarketingSherpa
Gartner Reports
Meta Ad Library
*ProQuest
*JSTOR
*Mintel
*Stylus
*WARC
*Ad Age
*eMarketer
*DataPlanet
*StatistaPro
*AdSpender
*IBIS Worldwide
*The Red Books
*SimplyAnalytics
*MarketLine Advantage
*AdForum Creative Network
*Indicates a database available
through the TCU Library resources

88. CONTACT
INFORMATION Dr. Brandon Chicotsky
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in Marketing
TCU Neeley School of Business
817.800.1798
b.chicotsky@tcu.edu
bchicotsky.com
angel.co/u/chicotsky
twitter.com/chicotsky
linkedin.com/in/chicotsky
neeley.tcu.edu/chicotsky