The interest in buyer personas has exploded, but the need to understand them hasn’t changed. In fact, at the Buyer Persona Institute we hear from marketers every day who lost their way as they attempted to build or leverage this important tool.
In this completely updated edition of The Buyer Persona Manifesto, Adele Revella, founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute, explains ...
- How to move beyond the buyer’s picture and capture her voice, focusing precisely on the narratives that are crucial to the marketing mission
- How buyer personas differ based on the amount of consideration a buyer gives to the buying decision
- How to avoid the traps of too many buyer personas that reveal too little in the way of insights
- How to interview buyers, including who to interview and what to ask
- How to put buyer personas to work for marketing and sales enablement
Product managers and product marketers need buying insights, not fluffy buyer persona profiles, to understand what they need to do and say to influence buying decisions.
We use these slides to introduce marketers to buyer personas that emphasize buying insights, which are the most actionable part of a buyer persona. This deck explains the 5 Rings of Buying Insight, the unique interview methodology that is needed to discover these insights, and the way buying insights are used to define the content of your message, marketing content, and sales training. If you would like to hear Adele Revella present these slides, contact us through our website at www.buyerpersona.com.
SALESmanago: Buyer Persona in Marketing Automationsalesmanago
Buyer Persona is a fictional character, representing features of your customers. It represents human face of customer. Such representations make it easier to segment customers, design Buyer's Journey and plan Lead Nurturing.
We have always wanted to have an example buyer persona, but our clients would never allow their competitors to have access to such valuable insights. We can’t argue with that.
So we developed the following persona without a client in mind. We built it by interviewing marketers about their decision to buy an email marketing solution.
Please note that one important aspect of this persona is far more valuable when it is not an example. The Perceived Barriers insight for a real persona reveals the reasons that buyers do not choose the solution you are marketing. This is often one of the most actionable aspects of the buyer persona, identifying opportunities to build sales and marketing strategies that overcome your buyer’s objections. We couldn’t capture those insights without choosing a specific email marketing solution for our example.
We hope that this example buyer persona will help you to understand why the 5 Rings of Buying Insight™ are rapidly becoming the standard framework for B2B and B2C buyers of medium-to-high consideration products, services and solutions.
What's a customer persona? How do you create one? Why & how will it help improve your marketing? Here's some answers & a one page template to make it easy.
Product managers and product marketers need buying insights, not fluffy buyer persona profiles, to understand what they need to do and say to influence buying decisions.
We use these slides to introduce marketers to buyer personas that emphasize buying insights, which are the most actionable part of a buyer persona. This deck explains the 5 Rings of Buying Insight, the unique interview methodology that is needed to discover these insights, and the way buying insights are used to define the content of your message, marketing content, and sales training. If you would like to hear Adele Revella present these slides, contact us through our website at www.buyerpersona.com.
SALESmanago: Buyer Persona in Marketing Automationsalesmanago
Buyer Persona is a fictional character, representing features of your customers. It represents human face of customer. Such representations make it easier to segment customers, design Buyer's Journey and plan Lead Nurturing.
We have always wanted to have an example buyer persona, but our clients would never allow their competitors to have access to such valuable insights. We can’t argue with that.
So we developed the following persona without a client in mind. We built it by interviewing marketers about their decision to buy an email marketing solution.
Please note that one important aspect of this persona is far more valuable when it is not an example. The Perceived Barriers insight for a real persona reveals the reasons that buyers do not choose the solution you are marketing. This is often one of the most actionable aspects of the buyer persona, identifying opportunities to build sales and marketing strategies that overcome your buyer’s objections. We couldn’t capture those insights without choosing a specific email marketing solution for our example.
We hope that this example buyer persona will help you to understand why the 5 Rings of Buying Insight™ are rapidly becoming the standard framework for B2B and B2C buyers of medium-to-high consideration products, services and solutions.
What's a customer persona? How do you create one? Why & how will it help improve your marketing? Here's some answers & a one page template to make it easy.
10 Rules that are foundational to the creation of buyer personas. Describes the key prinicples of buyer persona development and how they differ from customer profiling. A soource to help companies in the understanding of how buyer personas help to inform customer strategy.
The idea of this presentation is to create a current snapshot of the ongoing development of the discipline of buyer persona modelling. As a consultant for customer centered marketing I do buyer persona interviews for clients and I personally believe, that persona modeling is an indispensible fundament of every kind of customer centered marketing no matter if it is outbound marketing oriented or inbound marketing focused. This presentation gives an expert view on "best practices" for buyer persona development, the insights are coming from an interview with the leading subject-matter experts for buyer persona modeling.
When was the last time you we wowed by the customer service you received. This presentation will provide you with 10 crucial tips that will help you improve your overall customer service experience to your customer base.
It costs 5-15 more to acquire a new customer than it does keeping an existing one - that's why having an unforgettable customer service experience matters.
Also, I've published a book about providing that experience and how you can keep your customers happy and delighted with your service.
The customer satisfaction survey is a feedback survey that will ask the customer how satisfied they are with your products or services. It usually consists of one question that covers everything that a company wants to know about customer satisfaction.
Success in Sales and Marketing Part 2- BASIS Marketing TrainingKenny Ong
Success in Sales
1. Sales Mindset
2. Laws of Selling
3. How to Influence other people
4. Tele-Sales Tips
5. Practical and Easy-To-Learn Techniques to increase sales
Defining a buyer persona is a controversial subject in marketing. Learn why you need buyer persona for your digital strategy and template on how to create one.
Read more here: https://hiplayapp.com/blog/buyer-persona-for-digital-strategy/
Helping customers choose right productsReenu Lekhi
As a sales person our first job is to help customers find the product they are looking for. the presentation includes the need of the customer, different ways of helping the customer and the benefits of helping the customer.
Improve each stage of your sales cycle and boost sales numbers with these eff...Zoho SalesIQ
Sales tactics to help improve your sales conversion amidst the growing competition.
From this presentation, you'll learn how to:
* Increase the quality and quantity of your leads
* Build credibility among them
* Boost your chances of establishing contact
* Get prospects to buy from you
* Ensure steady sales growth from existing customers
* And, finally, how to handle the dreaded "No"
Here's the YouTube link to the webinar recording- https://youtu.be/7l9dRhnkiWs
Learn how to research a market and develop buyer personas for all of your target markets. This deck covers the fundamentals of customer segmentation, including gathering market information, how to pull that information into a cohesive buyer persona, and examples of Hubspot's buyer personas. Slides from a class taught by Hubspot's Sam Mallikarjunan.
Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Cliché? Yes. Uncomfortable? Yes.
Someone else’s shoes never feel quite right. But let’s get a little uncomfortable
to better understand your customers and why they buy. Walking a mile in your
customers’ shoes can help you uncover what motivates them.
Many people don't know what UX (User Experience) is, and how easily you can start with it. In this presentation we teach 3 techniques that teams can start using immediately without any UX experience.
By Sam Laing and Karen Greaves and Debre Barrett
10 Rules that are foundational to the creation of buyer personas. Describes the key prinicples of buyer persona development and how they differ from customer profiling. A soource to help companies in the understanding of how buyer personas help to inform customer strategy.
The idea of this presentation is to create a current snapshot of the ongoing development of the discipline of buyer persona modelling. As a consultant for customer centered marketing I do buyer persona interviews for clients and I personally believe, that persona modeling is an indispensible fundament of every kind of customer centered marketing no matter if it is outbound marketing oriented or inbound marketing focused. This presentation gives an expert view on "best practices" for buyer persona development, the insights are coming from an interview with the leading subject-matter experts for buyer persona modeling.
When was the last time you we wowed by the customer service you received. This presentation will provide you with 10 crucial tips that will help you improve your overall customer service experience to your customer base.
It costs 5-15 more to acquire a new customer than it does keeping an existing one - that's why having an unforgettable customer service experience matters.
Also, I've published a book about providing that experience and how you can keep your customers happy and delighted with your service.
The customer satisfaction survey is a feedback survey that will ask the customer how satisfied they are with your products or services. It usually consists of one question that covers everything that a company wants to know about customer satisfaction.
Success in Sales and Marketing Part 2- BASIS Marketing TrainingKenny Ong
Success in Sales
1. Sales Mindset
2. Laws of Selling
3. How to Influence other people
4. Tele-Sales Tips
5. Practical and Easy-To-Learn Techniques to increase sales
Defining a buyer persona is a controversial subject in marketing. Learn why you need buyer persona for your digital strategy and template on how to create one.
Read more here: https://hiplayapp.com/blog/buyer-persona-for-digital-strategy/
Helping customers choose right productsReenu Lekhi
As a sales person our first job is to help customers find the product they are looking for. the presentation includes the need of the customer, different ways of helping the customer and the benefits of helping the customer.
Improve each stage of your sales cycle and boost sales numbers with these eff...Zoho SalesIQ
Sales tactics to help improve your sales conversion amidst the growing competition.
From this presentation, you'll learn how to:
* Increase the quality and quantity of your leads
* Build credibility among them
* Boost your chances of establishing contact
* Get prospects to buy from you
* Ensure steady sales growth from existing customers
* And, finally, how to handle the dreaded "No"
Here's the YouTube link to the webinar recording- https://youtu.be/7l9dRhnkiWs
Learn how to research a market and develop buyer personas for all of your target markets. This deck covers the fundamentals of customer segmentation, including gathering market information, how to pull that information into a cohesive buyer persona, and examples of Hubspot's buyer personas. Slides from a class taught by Hubspot's Sam Mallikarjunan.
Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Cliché? Yes. Uncomfortable? Yes.
Someone else’s shoes never feel quite right. But let’s get a little uncomfortable
to better understand your customers and why they buy. Walking a mile in your
customers’ shoes can help you uncover what motivates them.
Many people don't know what UX (User Experience) is, and how easily you can start with it. In this presentation we teach 3 techniques that teams can start using immediately without any UX experience.
By Sam Laing and Karen Greaves and Debre Barrett
Watch sales people react to any marketing presentation, and the disconnect between the teams is palpable. When the reps’ most mundane smartphone updates are more compelling than the marketer’s plans to facilitate their success, it’s clear that marketing and sales are operating from different playbooks.
In this presentation, Adele Revella presents a plan to build a marketing team that provides key insights into the one topic that dominates the agenda of every successful sales person: how and why buyers choose among their options and what you can do to influence that decision.
Based on more than 25 years in the trenches as a B2B sales and marketing executive, trainer, and author, Adele reveals the steps that are enabling marketers to conduct buyer interviews and probe for facts about what really motivates their decisions – new insights that the buyer hasn’t yet shared with anyone. You’ll see how to build this new competency as the foundation of credibility and trust with all the marketer’s key audiences, including the sales people and the buyers themselves.
This infographic shows the evolution of market segmentation, its benefits and
potential pitfalls and how it serves as the foundation of any marketing strategy. It
also offers an in-depth, six-step guide to help organizations get started.
In today’s connected world consumer experience IS your brand. Your brand is defined, not by a marketing team or agency, but by how people experience it. Our study shows unequivocally what we think the industry has known instinctively for some time; women are disenfranchised by the automotive industry.
In this ground-breaking research project, we surveyed over 48,000 women to establish the "state of the nation" of the female experience of automotive.
Buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customers which provides a detailed description of a typical buyer or target audience.
Understanding exactly who you’re trying to attract and their stories will allow you to better craft your messages and create relevant and valuable content that will appeal to the right people.
Dude, where's my car? The "complicated" relationship between the automotive i...Good Rebels
We surveyed over 32,000 millennials, drilling deeply into the wider macro trends, to understand the current and future attitudes and behaviours of young people to mobility.
Do they want to own a car? Would they prefer to share through a car club? Do they want to learn to drive? Or does Uber and a future of driverless cars mean millennials can now spend their driving lessons fund on something else? Find out here.
Developing a buyer persona before launching into a digital marketing campaign is an invaluable exercise. This is the slide deck used at the Kansas City HubSpot User Group presentation on Buyer Personas by Melanie Bowman
Startup Selling: How to sell if you really, really have to and don't know how...SalesQualia
Are you a start-up CEO? A technical founder with a great product that you need to start selling now? An engineer at a start-up that's been asked to pitch in with the company's sales? Then this book is for you.
While you’re sitting at your desk coding or productizing, the phone might ring every so often or you receive occasional "request for information" emails from your website. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to gain an introduction from your venture capital partner or friends in the industry. What do you do with that new prospect? How do you move from product development to revenue?
This book teaches your about the basic aspects of the sales process, and provides everyday sales strategies you can utilize immediately in your business. It's practical advice that you can start using right now. In the next 20 minutes. Today. This book will make a difference in your business. You will immediately see how inbound callers respond differently and how you're able to decode the decision process. Before you know it, you might actually begin to like sales...
The author is a 10-year veteran in Silicon Valley with more than 15 years of sales experience. You'll love his candid writing style - loaded with specific questions to ask on sales calls and example conversations that you can implement immediately into your customer interactions.
Top 10 Excuses for Not Marketing Your Insurance or Benefits AgencyQ4intelligence
Benefits and insurance agencies have lost a lot of influence over the sales process because buyers are doing their own research before talking to your sales team. Move past these excuses to embrace marketing and make yourself attractive to prospective buyers.
Here’s your strategy tip or client attraction, how to get you more clients and leverage you and clone you and make you more money so you can make more money, be more successful, grow your business while working less.
Why you should do things that won’t scale the dark funnel case studyNemanja Zivkovic
DARK FUNNEL. Let's dive in.
Marketers have long been encouraged to believe that they can precisely monitor the customer journey online thanks to the digital sales environment.
However, the truth is that much of the customer journey continues to take place offline, and even online activities rarely follow a linear path.
The customer journey is complex, with elements that aren’t immediately obvious.
These hidden elements are what we refer to as the dark funnel in the online environment.
As you probably noticed, marketers are facing a difficult challenge in identifying a clear path to purchase due to this twisting and complicated process that can’t be easily tracked.
No more can they map the journey from need, to awareness, to consideration, to purchase — if they ever even could.
The existence of those hidden elements is the reason why you should do things that won’t scale.
And this is where we start talking about the dark funnel.
So if the dark funnel is designed to help you better understand how customers behave, how can it be a useful part of your marketing strategy?
Take a look:
✅ It’s not about knowing where customers are — it’s about understanding why they’re there
✅ It helps you define why you should do something and what to do
✅ It helps you understand how things change over time
As you can see, the Dark Funnel is not a new tactic or something designed to replace traditional analytics.
It’s an additional lens through which marketers can view and understand their customers.
This extra insight into customer behaviors and motivations can help you make more effective decisions in terms of strategy, messaging, and content creation.
I'll extend on this and get into details on a webinar called "Why You Should Do Things That Won’t Scale: The Dark Funnel Case Study"
Growing Your Manufacturing Business with Modern Marketing and SalesARTILLERY LLC
Webinar slides and script for presentation to members of the American Ceramics Society on November 20, 2019. Recorded version can be watched at http://bit.ly/2XQBvsC
B2B Marketing: Part 6: Cold Calling Series: Getting Execs to Talk to You by J...Julie Bevacqua
Why solution selling can work to your advantage in a competitive sales environment, and 5 easy ways to gain relevant information on your prospects and their pain.
Writing good copy entails being able to sell your reader just about anything by demonstrating it’s real benefits and utilizing key strategies in your material.
The most beneficial way to do that is to follow some different rules that are an awesome way to better your chances of selling your product. Being persuasive is your most beneficial skill when writing copy, and that's accented most by your power to showcase the advantages of whatever you're selling.
********************************************************************
THE KEY WITH CLICK AND BANK IS EVERYTHING IS AS SIMPLE AS IT POSSIBLY COULD BE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IS DONE FOR YOU
It includes high-quality content that your customers will love and come to your site every day. Also, It comes along with DFY monetization methods. You can start to get your business on the race just by one click.
Find Out More
https://www.facebook.com/makemoneyboss.xyz
https://bit.ly/2y9UYfl
Why is good copywriting so effective in turning website visitors into buyers?
The reason is that there are techniques copywriters know and use to elicit an emotional response from their readers.
This is why businesses pay good copywriters so much for their services.
In this short 39 page guide, you are about to discover the secrets behind the world's greatest marketing copy and persuasive sales letters.
By the end of the guide, you'll be able to put these secrets to work for yourself - so that you, too, can craft and assemble better copy for your business - "copy that converts."
As the Prince Of Print himself, the great Gary Halbert once said, "The Written Word Is the Strongest Source of Power in The Entire Universe."
ClickBank copywriting secrets part one. Inside this
eBook, you will discover the topics about why the top is the most
important aspect, writing a powerful headline, understanding the
psychology of headlines, headlines examples and headline swipes
you can use.
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
SEO as the Backbone of Digital MarketingFelipe Bazon
In this talk Felipe Bazon will share how him and his team at Hedgehog Digital share our journey of making C-Levels alike, specially CMOS realize that SEO is the backbone of digital marketing by showing how SEO can contribute to brand awareness, reputation and authority and above all how to use SEO to create more robust global marketing strategies.
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
Short video marketing has sweeped the nation and is the fastest way to build an online brand on social media in 2024. In this session you will learn:- What is short video marketing- Which platforms work best for your business- Content strategies that are on brand for your business- How to sell organically without paying for ads.
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
Digital Commerce Lecture for Advanced Digital & Social Media Strategy at UCLA...Valters Lauzums
E-commerce in 2024 is characterized by a dynamic blend of opportunities and significant challenges. Supply chain disruptions and inventory shortages are critical issues, leading to increased shipping delays and rising costs, which impact timely delivery and squeeze profit margins. Efficient logistics management is essential, yet it is often hampered by these external factors. Payment processing, while needing to ensure security and user convenience, grapples with preventing fraud and integrating diverse payment methods, adding another layer of complexity. Furthermore, fulfillment operations require a streamlined approach to handle volume spikes and maintain accuracy in order picking, packing, and shipping, all while meeting customers' heightened expectations for faster delivery times.
Amid these operational challenges, customer data has emerged as an important strategy. By focusing on personalization and enhancing customer experience from historical behavior, businesses can deliver improved website and brand experienced, better product recommendations, optimal promotions, and content to meet individual preferences. Better data analytics can also help in effectively creating marketing campaigns, improving customer retention, and driving product development and inventory management.
Innovative formats such as social commerce and live shopping are beginning to impact the digital commerce landscape, offering new ways to engage with customers and drive sales, and may provide opportunity for brands that have been priced out or seen a downturn with post-pandemic shopping behavior. Social commerce integrates shopping experiences directly into social media platforms, tapping into the massive user bases of these networks to increase reach and engagement. Live shopping, on the other hand, combines entertainment and real-time interaction, providing a dynamic platform for showcasing products and encouraging immediate purchases. These innovations not only enhance customer engagement but also provide valuable data for businesses to refine their strategies and deliver superior shopping experiences.
The e-commerce sector is evolving rapidly, and businesses that effectively manage operational challenges and implement innovative strategies are best positioned for long-term success.
Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User JourneysSearch Engine Journal
Digital platforms are constantly multiplying, and with that, user engagement is becoming more intricate and fragmented.
So how do you effectively navigate distributing and tailoring your content across these various touchpoints?
Watch this webinar as we dive into the evolving landscape of content strategy tailored for today's fragmented user journeys. Understanding how to deliver your content to your users is more crucial than ever, and we’ll provide actionable tips for navigating these intricate challenges.
You’ll learn:
- How today’s users engage with content across various channels and devices.
- The latest methodologies for identifying and addressing content gaps to keep your content strategy proactive and relevant.
- What digital shelf space is and how your content strategy needs to pivot.
With Wayne Cichanski, we’ll explore innovative strategies to map out and meet the diverse needs of your audience, ensuring every piece of content resonates and connects, regardless of where or how it is consumed.
Come learn how YOU can Animate and Illuminate the World with Generative AI's Explosive Power. Come sit in the driver's seat and learn to harness this great technology.
A.I. (artificial intelligence) platforms are popping up all the time, and many of them can and should be used to help grow your brand, increase your sales and decrease your marketing costs.In this presentation:We will review some of the best AI platforms that are available for you to use.We will interact with some of the platforms in real-time, so attendees can see how they work.We will also look at some current brands that are using AI to help them create marketing messages, saving them time and money in the process. Lastly, we will discuss the pros and cons of using AI in marketing & branding and have a lively conversation that includes comments from the audience.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees will learn about LLM platforms, like ChatGPT, and how they work, with preset examples and real time interactions with the platform. Attendees will learn about other AI platforms that are creating graphic design elements at the push of a button...pre-set examples and real-time interactions.Attendees will discuss the pros & cons of AI in marketing + branding and share their perspectives with one another. Attendees will learn about the cost savings and the time savings associated with using AI, should they choose to.
Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?Cut-the-SaaS
Discover the transformative power of AI in content creation with our presentation, "Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?" by Puran Parsani, CEO & Editor of Cut-The-SaaS. Learn how AI-generated content is revolutionizing marketing, publishing, education, healthcare, and finance by offering unprecedented efficiency, creativity, and scalability.
Understanding
AI-Generated Content:
AI-generated content includes text, images, videos, and audio produced by AI without direct human involvement. This technology leverages large datasets to create contextually relevant and coherent material, streamlining content production.
Key Benefits:
Content Creation: Rapidly generate high-quality content for blogs, articles, and social media.
Brainstorming: AI simulates conversations to inspire creative ideas.
Research Assistance: Efficiently summarize and research information.
Market Insights:
The content marketing industry is projected to grow to $17.6 billion by 2032, with AI-generated content expected to dominate over 55% of the market.
Case Study: CNET’s AI Content Controversy:
CNET’s use of AI for news articles led to public scrutiny due to factual inaccuracies, highlighting the need for transparency and human oversight.
Benefits Across Industries:
Marketing: Personalize content at scale and optimize engagement with predictive analytics.
Publishing: Automate content creation for faster publication cycles.
Education: Efficiently generate educational materials.
Healthcare: Create accurate content for patients and professionals.
Finance: Produce timely financial content for decision-making.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations:
Transparency: Disclose AI use to maintain trust.
Bias: Address potential AI biases with diverse datasets.
SEO: Ensure AI content meets SEO standards.
Quality: Maintain high standards to prevent misinformation.
Conclusion:
AI-generated content offers significant benefits in efficiency, personalization, and scalability. However, ethical considerations and quality assurance are crucial for responsible use. Explore the future of content creation with us and see how AI is transforming various industries.
Connect with Us:
Follow Cut-The-SaaS on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Medium. Visit cut-the-saas.com for more insights and resources.
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
The Secret to Engaging Modern Consumers: Journey Mapping and Personalization
In today's digital landscape, understanding the customer's journey and delivering personalized experiences are paramount. This masterclass delves into the art of consumer journey mapping, a powerful technique that visualizes the entire customer experience across touchpoints. Attendees will learn how to create detailed journey maps, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for optimization. The presentation also explores personalization strategies that leverage data and technology to tailor content, products, and experiences to individual customers. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge approaches that drive engagement and loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
Current consumer landscape; Steps to mapping an effective consumer journey; Understanding the value of personalization; Integrating mapping and personalization for success; Brands that are getting It right!; Best Practices; Future Trends
Digital marketing is the art and science of promoting products or services using digital channels to reach and engage with potential customers. It encompasses a wide range of online tactics and strategies aimed at increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately, converting those leads into customers.
https://nidmindia.com/
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
Your Path to Profits - The Game-Changing Power of a Marketing - Daniel Bussius
The Buyer Persona Manifesto, 2nd Edition
1. 1
nextprev
The Buyer Persona Manifesto | Second Edition
It’s Time to Channel the Power of
Your Buyer’s Authentic Voice by Adele Revella
2. 2
nextprev
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 | Preface: It’s Time To Channel The Power Of Your
Buyer’s Authentic Voice
5 | Chapter 1: How To Make A Persona Sing
6 | Chapter 2: The Five Rings Of Buying Insight™
7 | Chapter 3: It’s All About The Interview
8 | Chapter 4: Putting Your Insights To Work
9 | Chapter 5: The Big Payoff For Marketing
10 | About Adele Revella
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To my great delight, I hear feedback like this all the time from the
people I work with. The insights that flow from a skillfully crafted
buyer persona usually have that effect, dramatically boosting the
confidence of marketers – and their business results.
Apply those insights to messaging and it’s almost like watching
a guy who’s been a bad date for decades – droning on about
himself without pausing for breath – suddenly discover the
wisdom of asking his dinner companion what interests her.
Marketing content, all too often, really is that bad: an endless
stream of “me-me-me” spammed out in hopes something will
stick. It’s driven by internal objectives
with absolutely no thought for
the buyer’s concerns.
No wonder they don’t
pay the slightest attention
to what we say.
And this is what changes with a skillfully applied buyer persona.
All of a sudden Marketing gains the ability to channel the voice
of that long-suffering dinner companion, to tell Mr. Bad Date:
“Enough about you already. Listen closely to what I want… then
tell me what you’re going do about it.”
Done right, that voice comes through with such authority, clarity
and precision that nobody can dispute its validity. It’s a continual
stream of insight that offers immense strategic value to any
organization – value that gives Marketing in-house stature it’s
never had before.
Once that insight begins to drive skillful messaging,
SOMETHING MAGICAL HAPPENS.
It’s almost as if that dinner companion looks up in astonishment
(from the smartphone she’s covertly browsing under the table),
thinking, “He’s actually talking to me.” She leans in and begins
to pay attention. Respect and trust begin to grow as a meaningful
relationship takes shape.
“Me!” “Me!”
“Me!”“Me!”
“It’s almost like cheating, like getting the exam paper weeks before the final.
Instead of guessing what matters, now I know… not only what the customer wants;
I know how she goes about it.”
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No paranormal powers are needed to do this,
though. No cheating; no stratospheric budget
either. Just smart, sustained application of the
proven approach to buyer personas that this
book will introduce to you.
But it works like magic all the same. And its
transformative power is what makes now the
best time ever to be a marketer.
We got the picture, but it won’t tell us
anything…
“We did the whole persona thing. We
know she likes hot yoga and hiking on
the weekends. We pegged her as blonde.
Her picture is on the marketing room wall
and we stare at it. But she won’t tell us
anything useful.”
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,
as they say.
Fifteen years ago when I began to devote
my energies to the buyer persona craft, no
one had even heard of it. Over the years I’ve
helped many people “get it” – and powerfully.
But I’ve also seen – mostly from a distance –
many people who got the gist but missed the
heart of it.
Sure, it’s great to have a picture of your buyer.
But pictures don’t talk, and it’s her voice that
you need.
Seriously, I’ve heard of marketing teams
spending all afternoon arguing over the buyer’s
gender – and I know why. Nobody told them
what they were supposed to do with the picture
once they had it.
That’s the difference in my approach,
refined over 15 years. The buyer persona is
an archetype, a composite picture. I take
marketers a big step further to add the
composite voice.
The trick – which took me years to perfect –
is to usefully synthesize that composite voice,
filtering out tons of noise, to focus precisely on
the narratives crucial to the marketing mission.
It’s not that difficult, but you have to be
methodical in order to achieve a consistently
high level of accuracy and clarity. And I’ve only
found one method that can do that; the one I’m
going to teach you.
Before I do that, one more question about the
applicability of buyer personas. We need to
think about consideration.
The responses that come back are sometimes near ecstatic; comments like: “Yes! At last
someone gets it; let’s talk!” Or, “You guys must have ESP. You must’ve read my mind.”
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A Question of
CONSIDERATION
There are two very distinct tribes in
marketing, with almost no intermarriage:
business-to-business (B2B) and business-
to-consumer (B2C). Few people jump
from one to the other in mid-career.
But to me this is a false dichotomy.
What separates the two is not actually
focus on business versus consumers.
It’s a question of consideration.
When a consumer picks up a new
magazine at a supermarket checkout,
very little active consideration may
be involved. She doesn’t line up
five different magazines and make
a spreadsheet comparing value and
content. She doesn’t have to ask
permission or solicit input from anyone
else. And she can’t tell you why she was
subliminally attracted by the font on
the cover – because she didn’t actively
consider any of that. So all she might
be able to tell you is, “I dunno, it had a
nice photo of Caroline Kennedy on the
cover…and I’ve always liked her.”
On the other end of the consideration
scale is the vendor selection process for
a new corporate IT solution. It may take
years and involve dozens of people.
Every facet of value and performance
is considered to death. The people
involved can tell stories till the cows
come home about how the decision
was reached…if you can get them to
spill the beans.
Between the two extremes you find
consumer buying decisions that involve
a level of consideration almost as
intense. When buying a new digital
camera or a car many consumers spend
hours comparing features and prices
and looking up reviews online.
And when planning a vacation you
may spend hours researching and
considering your choice. Quite likely, you
can tell a story about the consideration
you put into a decision like that.
Here’s the irony...
The buyer persona first captured the
attention of B2C marketers as a tool to
give them a picture of their consumer:
what she looked like; where she lived
and worked; what her preferences
were across a wide spectrum of
product categories. It didn’t emphasize
capturing the narrative of her buying
consideration because with most
consumer purchases there isn’t much
depth to it.
Once B2B marketers caught on to the
potential of buyer personas, savvy
practitioners began to see the need for
an audio track alongside the video. We
discovered a whole new dimension of
value in buyer personas.
So it’s all about consideration. Whether
it’s B2C or B2B, if a high degree of
consideration is involved, the buyer
persona can help you understand the
dynamics behind the buying decision.
And here’s how you get it...
6. It’s the result of 15 years of intensive observation and experimentation with hundreds of
marketing teams. It’s practical, straightforward to implement – and it works.
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After huge effort, marketers are often disappointed to find their
carefully crafted persona has nothing useful to say – just random
comments and noise. So everyone’s hard work ends up as intranet
dust – the e-marketing equivalent to shelfware.
By starting here, though, let’s be clear about one thing: I’m not giving
you a short-cut, because cutting corners is the quickest route to
failure. As we will discuss, getting useful results requires meticulous
groundwork. But even the most diligent teams can end up with half-
baked results for the most frustrating reason imaginable: they follow
a recipe that omits the critical ingredient.
Most buyer persona “cookbooks” focus on creating a picture, a
biographical sketch that lets you see the buyer. But they stop short
of enabling you to hear what she has to say…much less how to sift
from that narrative the fine-grained insights that reveal how you fit
into her world.
To get a coherent, useful narrative from dozens or even hundreds
of voices that comprise your persona you need a method, a means
of filtering and harmonizing what they say. But as no such method
existed, I had to create my own proprietary approach. It focuses
on attaining – again, methodically – a defined set of insights that
combine to create a multi-dimensional, high-definition window on
the buyer’s world.
Chapter 1:
HOW TO MAKE A PERSONA SING
Let’s cut to the chase. Instead of starting with “What’s a buyer persona and
how do you build one?”, let’s begin where teams are most apt to fail.
?
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Chapter 2:
5 RINGS OF BUYING INSIGHT™
Where the Buyer Persona Profile creates a composite picture of the person you need to reach, the 5 Rings
of Buying Insight™ reveal the buying decision you need to influence – telling how, when and why the buyer
engages to choose you or a competitor, or to stick with the status quo.
Think of it like a study tool for an exam. The five insights encompass everything you need to know in order
to ace the final, saving you from having to pull a needle from a haystack of extraneous material. When you
sit for this exam, you know:
priority
initiatives
success
factors
perceived
barriers
the buyer’s
journey
decision
criteria
3 Which buyers are receptive, and which will ignore you no matter what you say
3 Which aspects of your solution are relevant to them, and which are irrelevant
3 Which attitudes prevent your buyers from considering this approach
3 Which resources your buyer will trust as they evaluate their options
3 Which buyers are involved in this decision and how much sway they have
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priority
initiatives
success
factors
perceived
barriers
What causes certain buyers to
invest in a solution like yours,
and how are they different from
buyers who remain attached to
the status quo?
What operational or
personal results does your
buyer persona expect from
purchasing this solution?
What concerns cause your
buyer to believe that your
solution or company is not
their best option?
In other words, what’s really on the buyer’s
radar? To use an IT example, knowing how
old his system is, you may think your buyer
is obsessed with replacing it. Meanwhile,
what actually keeps him up at night is
fear the entire department will move to
India. Too often, we arrogantly presume
that since what we do is important to us
it must be just as important to the buyer.
The truth is out there, find it.
But don’t confuse this with pain points,
and assume you can simply reverse-
engineer based on the capabilities of your
solution. You want to understand the
personal or organizational circumstances
that cause your buyers to allocate their
time, budget or political capital to resolve
the pain. What happens to make this
investment a priority for this type of buyer?
Success Factors resemble benefits, but
this insight is far more specific and it’s
written from the buyer’s perspective.
For example, where you might be
pushing your solution’s power to cut
costs, this insight might focus on
where the buyer sees opportunity to
reduce business risks.
Done right, this insight yields a far
more specific and compelling set of
factors than anything you can reverse
engineer from the capabilities of your
solution. Instead of ending up with
a ten-word tagline or summary that
sounds just like your competitors, you
will be armed with a concise statement
of your buyers’ key expectations.
I call this the “bad news insight”
because it tells you exactly why this
buyer will not buy from you. It could
be internal resistance from another
function or scars from prior experience.
It could be a negative perception of your
product or company, accurate or not.
You need to know where the barriers are
and what’s behind them. Who’s blocking
you up the ladder? Where’s that negative
impression coming from, social media?
As a result, you may be surprised to
find that your most valuable content
focuses on overcoming these barriers
and addressing objections that your
competitors didn’t know were there.
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the buyer’s
journey
decision
criteria
…reveals the behind-the-scenes story
at each phase of the evaluation
Which aspects of the
competing offerings do your
buyers perceive as most
critical, and what do they
expect from each one?
Who’s involved? How are solutions
evaluated? How does the process unfold as
the decision gets made? This insight tracks
the stages your buyers go through as they
evaluate options, eliminate contenders and
settle on a final choice.
Behind the scenes, this can be a very messy
process. Your key buyer persona may live in
a complex ecosystem that includes all sorts
of characters who have a hand in decision-
making at various stages of the journey. Who
helps your key persona and who gets in her
way? We’re often surprised to find that the
people at the top of the totem pole have less
clout than vendors assume.
With an accurate understanding of the
journey you can support your buyer with
exactly what’s needed at each stage. And you
can confidently commit your resources where
they will have maximum impact, be it social
media, content marketing, sales engagement
or something entirely creative.
This final insight directly informs
marketing messaging and content,
clarifying the buyer’s key questions and
the answers they want to hear. But it’s
equally critical for sales enablement,
as it identifies which buyers care about
specific features and why.
For example, if the buyer wants an “easy-
to-use” solution we dig to find what
they mean by that. Where do they want
that ease? And how do they go about
evaluating which solution is easiest?
We usually focus on revealing the criteria
behind three to five capabilities that
matter most to the buyer in question.
For example, specific product features,
implementation issues or price vs. value
calculations.
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Could you find another way to do the
same thing? Sure… and you can re-invent
the wheel while you’re at it. But there’s a
decisive advantage to following a precise
and proven method with this work. Without
a very defined, paint-by-numbers path to
the goal, I’ve seen one marketing team
after another wander off into the woods,
never to be seen again.
It usually happens about two hours into an
all-afternoon meeting. Someone pipes up
with a bright idea like: “We can cut the cost
by skipping all these interviews… we can
just have our sales guys fill in the blanks in
these rings!”
It’s like the short-sighted VC who figures
out how much capital a new venture will
need to succeed, then hedges his bets by
halving the amount.
For years I tried to follow the old proverb:
“Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for
a day; teach a man to fish and you’ll feed
him for a lifetime.” I thought, if I teach
people the principles they can do it all by
themselves. But experience has taught me
that the rings work much more powerfully
when my team remains involved right
through execution.
That’s why half our work is now devoted
to crafting buyer personas for clients. But
we’re equally happy to teach the craft of
buyer persona development from the first
step. And that’s where we’ll go now.
THE RINGS’ POWER IS
IN THE EXECUTION
Applied diligently, the 5 Rings of Buying Insight™ work wonders.
And if you’ll excuse my boasting – hey, I’m a marketer! – I’ll tell
you that my proprietary method is now a key tool at three of the
world’s five largest software vendors, and increasingly regarded as
the B2B industry standard in buyer personas.
What is a buyer persona?
Buyer personas are examples of real
buyers who influence decisions about
the products, services or solutions
you market. They are a tool that builds
confidence to persuade buyers to choose
you rather than a competitor.
The 5 Rings of Buying Insight™ are
their most essential aspect, revealing
surprising findings about how, when and
why your buyer makes the decisions you
want to influence.
On average, marketers who segment
buyer personas around key insights need
half as many personas as those who
focus on demographics. More critically,
insightful buyer personas readily inform
strategies for persuasive messaging,
content marketing, product launches,
campaigns and sales alignment.
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None of the above, and here’s where the real skill comes in. To get the
insights required for a useful buyer persona you have to talk – well,
mostly listen – directly to buyers. You have to get them on the phone
and interview them.
How many interviews should you do?
It’s usually possible to craft a highly accurate persona from just six to
ten interviews. It’s quality, not quantity, that counts. Five really good
interviews are more useful than 50 clumsy ones.
Who should do the interviews?
The best interviewers you can find. If you have people on your team
willing to learn new skills, you can do it in-house. But as this is the
critical factor in the whole process you may want to work with a
seasoned professional interviewer.
Where do you start?
With a team that’s in the planning stages of an important launch or
campaign. Include people from each of the functional areas involved
in the project. Make their buyer persona work a priority and dedicate
time and resources to it. If you say, “Do this when you have time,”
they won’t find the time and the project will fail.
Next, select a few people from that team who stand out for their
energy, enthusiasm, empathy and curiosity. Task them with doing the
interviews or working with your professional interviewer to define the
project. Best practice is to record the interview, leaving the interviewer
free to focus on building rapport.
When doing live interviews, rapport is all about making eye contact –
and even many seasoned journalists get this wrong. Instead of looking
and listening they keep their heads down taking notes. That means
they miss the facial expressions and body language that tell so much
more than words alone. When you have eye contact, your reaction can
encourage a person to answer more candidly, to elaborate.
In a phone interview, without that eye contact, it is tougher to build
rapport. That’s why the interviewer needs to learn how to keep the
buyer talking:
“That’s really interesting...”
“How did you evaluate that...”
“Wow, that must’ve been a challenge for you...”
Chapter 3:
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE INTERVIEW
“How do you make these personas, anyway? Do you rub a magic lamp to summon up
the genie? Do you ask the Starship Enterprise to beam your buyer down to the planet?”
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Learn to stifle the urge to correct the interviewee
no matter how stupid, wrong or unfair his
perceptions are. This will be tough at times, but the
interviewer’s job is to uncover perceptions, not to
change them.
Bringing out those deep-down perceptions
is a skill that great journalists cultivate.
In a friendly way, ask a
provocative question that
gets the subject engaged.
When one line of questioning
hits a wall, you move on to
another topic, then circle back
to probe for further detail.
Interviewing is an art that requires
practice and skills that you may need
to develop.
That’s why you may want to start by working with
the best outside interviewer you can find. But there
is no reason you can’t develop this capability in-
house, either through training or hiring people with
the right background – ex-journalists, for example.
So who to interview?
When your buyer persona team is geared up and ready to go, start by looking
for buyers who have made a decision in the past several months.
This is where you may hit your first obstacle: sales reps may not want
Marketing to talk to their contacts. So you may need the Marketing head to ask
the Sales head to help secure cooperation.
But don’t limit the search to your own sales force. Mine the stack of business
cards you have from conferences. Trawl through online industry forums.
Search LinkedIn. Work like a detective to sleuth out buyers. If you still come up
empty-handed, a focus group recruiter may be able to help find people who
match your buyer’s profile.
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Once you begin contacting buyers, ask for about 30 minutes of their
time. Your task is to gain all the insights needed to populate the 5
Rings of Buying Insight™ – but don’t turn the questions into a script
or you’ll sound like a telemarketer. Big turnoff.
Make the questions open-ended to get your subjects talking.
“What happened on the day you decided to look for a
solution like this?”
“What did you do to find potential solutions?”
“How did you narrow the options down?”
“How did you decide to continue to include those companies?”
“Who else was involved at that stage of the decision?”
With follow-up questions, aim for as much clarity as possible. Since
generalizations like “we wanted to grow our business” aren’t really
insightful, ask “How will this help you to grow faster?”
When you write up the results, quote the buyer directly. You want to
capture the way they talk and the words they choose. You want to
highlight the points where the buyer got worked up and started driving
the conversation.
After doing six or so interviews, you will begin to have a sense of the
roles various buyer personas play. Who triggers the initial search for
a solution? Who evaluates the options? Who else is involved? Will
the CIO respond to a marketing campaign? Or should you start lower
down the food chain?
Armed with that knowledge, shift the focus in subsequent interviews
to questions that emerged in the initial round. Expect to hear similar
answers emerge as you fill in each of the 5 Rings. But don’t ever stop
doing buyer interviews! Your knowledge of the buyer is never complete.
Circumstances never stop changing.
And what to ask?
Never assume you know the answer!
? ? ? ? ?
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Now that they clearly understand the buying process, the team may realize (for
example) that the CIO is never going to attend their webinar. CIO sign-off may
be essential in the end, though, so top-level support must be built as the process
moves along. But Marketing now knows who down the ladder can initiate the
discussion. This insight triggers marketing and sales enablement activities that
guide programs and reps to focus on the right people at each stage.
Now that they understand what events trigger the search for solutions –
budget cycles, equipment-update cycles, business-process changes, expansion
plans and more – the team calculates when to make contact.
Having identified where buyers begin looking for solutions, the team targets the
events, online forums, magazines, bloggers and influential columnists they look
to. Knowing what buyers hope to hear, the team plans content to impress them
wherever they land.
Chapter 4:
PUTTING YOUR INSIGHTS
TO WORK
Insights gleaned from the interview process will equip your
team with all they need to develop detailed and accurate buyer
persona profiles and – most important – to flesh out the 5 Rings.
Guided by these insights, your team will know exactly where to
focus their efforts.
For more on how to apply buyer
persona insights, see the ebook I
co-authored with Maribeth Ross,
For Compelling Content, Let Your
Buyers Be Your Guide.
Who?
Where?
When?
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Spray buyer persona insights on marcom-babble and wipe with
a cloth. What remains are clear answers to questions that really
matter to buyers. When freed from wading through gobbledy-
gook to find the information they need, buyers are not only
grateful but more likely to trust you.
Buyer persona insights tell you not only what the buyer wants
to know, but how best to tell the story. Let your creative team
hear the buyer’s authentic voice: the words and metaphors they
choose; how formal or informal they are. Don’t stoop to, “Dude,
it’s awesome,” but if your buyer is a 24-year-old techie then you
shouldn’t talk like a Pentagon spokesman either.
To implement your buyer persona insights the team will
inevitably have to overcome internal opposition. For example,
engineers may feel slighted if you omit their dense description
of features buyers don’t want to hear about. Use the insights to
explain why you’ve got to do it.
Here’s one pitfall. Teams often get so excited by their buyer persona that they want
to introduce him – like a trophy boyfriend – to everyone in the company. Resist that
urge. Unless the introduction comes with convincing answers to a critical question,
it is too easy to mistake this for some trivial game in the marketing department.
Sell the results you achieve with this tool, not the tool itself.
If your buyer persona initiative succeeds, consistent wins will attract attention
throughout the company. People will notice how your communications differ
from competitors. Even the CEO may start to ask, “What’s going on down there
in Marketing?”
At this point, your ultimate Success Factor appears on the horizon.
What?
Why?
How?
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If the lack of understanding of our role is frustrating, the respect
deficit that comes with it can be absolutely fatal – especially at the
C-suite level.
I once led a workshop in which a senior executive stood up and
sucked the oxygen out of the room by asking: “How do I know that
anything would change if I eliminated the marketing organization?”
Still in shock from the question, the marketing team’s responses
were scarily unconvincing.
Contrast that with the performance of one of my star protégés when
confronted with “The Plan,” carved in stone by Product Development.
The intention was to bet the year’s revenue goal on a technically
brilliant innovation that was the pride of Engineering. Trouble was,
that wasn’t what mattered to the buyer just then.
My buyer persona ninjas were able to demonstrate that point so
authoritatively and decisively that the company was able to avoid
a major disaster that might have drastically reduced profits for the
year. The shockwaves then reverberated throughout the company:
“You mean, Marketing actually saved the day?”
No one had ever seen Marketing wield such strategic influence.
This is the measure of the power that the buyer persona can confer
on a marketing organization.
My dream is that, not long from now, when asked what it is they
do, marketers will be able to respond with confidence: “We tell
everyone in the company what buyers will and will not buy, and we
build lasting relationships with buyers who appreciate our ability to
meet their real needs.”
That’s my dream, and I’m happy to share it.
Chapter 5:
THE BIG PAYOFF FOR MARKETING: RESPECT
“So what does Marketing do, exactly?” Why is it that marketers are the only ones who get stupid questions
like this? After all, everyone knows what goes on over in Finance or Engineering. And most people have a
pretty good idea how they while away the hours down in HR – even if they do suspect evil at work.
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