Why customer personas may be an outdated marketing technique
Apr 27th
“When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards.” - Don DeLillo
A few weeks ago here on {grow} I ran a piece by Rob Petersen explaining the value of working with “customer personas” to develop a content marketing plan. In fact, he provided 31 great ideas!
Customer personas are a centerpiece of many marketing strategies today but I wanted to provide an alternative perspective. I’d like you to think about this idea — Maybe to stand out in a world of malignant information density we need to throw out scripted content aimed at target personas and try to actually create content by humans, for humans. After all, aren’t our competitors creating content to cater to the same personas?
Personas may hurt, not help, content creation
Creating “personas” is a popular technique to provide focus and help a company develop a “voice” aimed at an ideal reader. I’m not saying that personas are without merit (especially when it comes to tech and developing user interfaces) but I would like you think critically and not go down this path just because a consultant or advertising agency tells you to do it.
If you believe that authentic, original, and human content is the best formula to attract an audience who will engage with you, then why would we ask a marketing professional to fake their way forward based on a script aimed at a theoretical personality?
Here’s an example of the problem.
The Persona Trap
I was recently working on a content strategy with a CMO of a medium-sized and fast-growing company. As I often do, I worked in collaboration with their advertising agency who was going to be handling the nuts and bolts of the execution.
I sat politely and quietly as the ad agency walked the CMO and her team through a painstaking process to develop buyer “personas” for targeted content. I knew I would not have to make an intervention because I could tell the CMO, an experienced industry veteran, was growing increasingly agitated as we entered the third hour of the process!
Finally, the dam burst.
“Why are we spending time on this?” she asked. “Are you telling me I don’t know my customers and can’t write about something that is relevant and interesting to them? I have worked in this business for over 30 years!”
I gave her a standing ovation in my mind.
She’s exactly right. If you know your business intimately — and every marketing leader should — manufacturing scripted content gets in the way of real customer connection.
I saw this same thing happen with a customer in Toronto. The president and founder of the company was handed a persona-based content development plan from an ad agency and was miserable. “I just can’t keep writing this way,” she said. “I’m bored out of my mind and it’s not working any way.”
I encouraged her to scrap the plan and write from her heart. Her first post, which recounted important business lessons she learned from The Grateful Dead, was the number one blog post in the company’s history. And more important, content creation became fun for her again. Her passion came alive and it shined through in her content.
The human imperative
As I explained in my Content Shock article, we’re in a period where the novelty of content marketing has worn off. In an environment characterized by dramatically increasing levels of information and a limited ability to consume it, we have to do things differently — much differently — to stand out.
Here is something I am convinced about — over time, the most human companies will win. Showing our hearts, showing ourselves, showing our love of The Grateful Dead, is the opposite of what we expect from business leaders but it is the essential characteristic that draws us to them.
Be. More. Human.
How do you achieve this human connection by writing according to a script of what you BELIEVE people want to hear? Tear down those artificial walls and show yourself. This is not easy. This may not feel like the safe path forward. But it is what your customers want and crave.
If you are writing for a persona and your competitors are writing for a persona, how is this creating emotional connection and unique value? Being “you” is the only true source of originality you have.
If you know your customers intimately, don’t hide behind a cookie-cutter advertising plan. Consider scrapping the personas and meeting customers on their terms, with an open mind and an open heart.
Be. More. Human. Agree?
Note: Due to my travel schedule I may delayed in responding to comments to this post.
Illustration from the Berlin Wall courtesy Flickr CC and Abhijeet Rane.
Change the Channel to Ignite Content
Apr 23rd
By Jeffrey Slater, {grow} Community Member
After reading Mark’s new book, The Content Code
The answer is YES.
The languishing blog
Since 2009, I have written a blog called MomentSlater, two or three times a week. I get a few comments on each post and a handful of shares. As a part-time marketing coach, I like to unravel the mysteries of marketing.
Blogging helps me think through marketing issues and gives me a chance to provide marketing coaching to the small business community that follows my work. I am always looking for new ways to expand my reach. As a full-time Director of Global Marketing for Nomacorc, the leader in wine closures, a little fuel in the marketing creativity tank helps, too.
Lighting the fuse
One of the key lessons I took away from The Content Code is that I needed to think about content distribution. It occurred to me that I could post the same content from The Marketing Sage (my site) to LinkedIn in their blog posting area called Pulse. I thought I’d run a little experiment to compare what happens when I post the same content on my personal blog’s and on LinkedIn. Could I benefit from the same idea in a new channel of distribution?
I thought that my recent blog post, called “The Thank You Experiment,” would be a great test to see what might happen. In this post, I share a simple idea about a client who had his team call up his customers to say “thank you” — and only “thank you.” No upselling. No cross promotion. No offers for buy one get one free. No transactions.
Just a simple thanks.
I copied and pasted my content from my personal blog to LinkedIn. Then I went back out for a walk among the North Carolina pine tar pollen and forgot about the experiment.
You can read about the Thank You Experiment on The Marketing Sage or on LinkedIn. Same content. Different channel.
Very different results!
As interesting as The Thank You Experiment was, the channeling experiment was just as interesting…
The results are in …
Within 24 hours, the post on the LinkedIn channel received 11,198 views, 440 likes, and 93 comments. I started getting 10-15 Twitter mentions an hour as people started sharing. That’s more engagement and ignitions than I have seen in a long time, probably since I wrote about having lunch with President Reagan in 1985. Talk about setting off sparks.
Like in real estate, a blog can increase in value because of location. Through LinkedIn I was able to get in front of a larger audience interested in small business marketing ideas. And by activating one of the ideas in The Content Code, I was able to gain new followers, expand the reach of my ideas and to attract a new client who needed some marketing coaching. So, I’d like to say thank you to my friend, Mark. The ideas in your new book helped spark some ignition.
Now it’s time for you to get out your content decoder rings, and go ignite your business.
Jeffrey Slater writes a blog called MomentSlater at The Marketing Sage. During the day he can be found talking about wine corks as Director of Global Marketing for Nomacorc.
Image courtesy bigstockphoto.com
Why the economics of blogging are diminishing
Apr 22nd
By Mars Dorian, {grow} Contributing Columnist
When I started blogging about five years ago (back when we felt smart with dumb phones), I devoured every blog post about how to write epic blog posts.
I stalked the usual suspects online, e.g. Problogger, Copyblogger and the masters, looking for little hints on crafting highly-viral articles that would make people hit the share button like they stole the keyboard.
I enslaved myself to a bi-weekly publishing schedule and implemented everything that I had learned. Some posts attracted up to 200-300 retweets and dozens of compliments, attracted clients, and helped me built my online career.
And for a while, it was good, because I followed the ‘proven’ formula of the wise ones that made money teaching others how to make money with blogging.
But the economics of blogging don’t work the same way any more.
How successful blogging worked years ago
- Write 2000-3000 words ‘epic’ evergreen how-to blog posts that worked as clinkbait, i.e. articles that would be linked and shared across other blogs and social media platforms for months, if not years, to come.
- Make each post solve a specific problem and go deeeep.
- Make the post all about the reader/customer.
I followed the formula for years, but then, about two years ago, the shares and comments declined. And so did the clients.
So I decided to wind down the blogging game and focus solely on client acquisition and networking. For some people, blogging is still a viable option, but I believe the diminishing returns on blogging are imminent for everyone.
Why blogging loses its relevance
1) Epic evergreen blogposts are obsolete.
We’re now living in the digital publishing landscape, and it has changed our information intake forever. If you want to go deep into an area of expertise, you can buy short, cheap (self-published?) ebooks on your chosen topic, take a course on skillshare.com or udemy.com and get a multimedia experience, even on mobile. Something which wasn’t as popular five years ago.
2) Blogger interaction has moved to social media networks.
Back in the day, Twitter and Facebook were solely networks to share your blog posts, while the interaction happened on your blog, in the form of (many) comments. Those roles seemed to have switched.
3) Video killed the blogging star.
Vine and now Meerkat allow you to shoot quick vids that are easy and fun to consume. With our attention shrinking to nano-levels, pure text-based content becomes as appealing as a face hug with a steel wall. Text means work, video means fun. I often catch myself clicking on Twitter and Facebook vids, even if I’m not interested in the headline. Just the idea of a short motion picture which I can consume passively satisfies my lazy soul. I prefer writing of course, but this is the future.
4) People don’t fully read blog posts.
Especially not the longer ones. A lot of followers who are long-time readers of mine told me they were scanning and skipping my posts. To be honest, that hurt a little. There I was in my creative cave, worrying about word choice and blog structure, and then those schmucks go National Skipping Day on me. When I ask around my networks, I get the same answers: readers fly over the articles. Lack of time. Lack of attention.
I’m sure there are plenty other of reasons, but these are the major ones I found. In 2014, I wrote an article here on Grow about quitting blogging, but I’ve picked it up again, just with a wayyy different focus. Back in 2009, it was a useful marketing tool to attract new clients, nowadays, it’s a personal diary to build a stronger connection with my existing follower base.
What my blog post in 2015 looks like
1) I write short, 500-750 word posts with a single lesson, e.g. what I learned from self-publishing my first book. No evergreen, in-debth blog posts for me anymore. That deep content will be turned into ebooks that I charge money for.
2) I get away from the instructional how-to manual style and turn into a Mars Dorian tabloid. It sounds negative, but hear me out. I’ve once written that since 2014, style matters more than substance, because algorithm and wikipedia can give you all the information you need, but they have zero emotional pulling power. Humans always crave emotion. A wikipedia page gives you info, but I can make you feel something.
3) I relate everything that I write about to me. This again sounds counterproductive, because the usual advice is always to ‘Make it about the reader/customer’. I think that’s true for products you ask money for, but if you publish a free post and you have a strong voice in your market, people want to know what YOU have to say about your chosen topic. There’s tons of entrepreneurial advice on Forbes, Fast Company and the like, but people return to Gary Vaynerchuk because they want HIS opinion on entrepreneurship.
In my estimation, the golden age of blogging has passed. Endless choices of social media networks, quick video apps, and the continuing attention-loss are all to blame, but I’m still looking forward to the future. I’m turning the former five star blog post meal with its five courses into an easy-to-digest happy meal. Not as juicy, but just enough satisfying to stay relevant.
How important is blogging to you in 2015? Has its relevance ever shifted for you?
which you can check out on Amazon for just $2.99! Consider his artwork for your next project: http://www.marsdorian.com
Maybe your podcast is not a podcast
Apr 21st
Last week I was having a new Internet line installed at my home. I explained to the workers, all under 30, that I needed a period of quiet during the middle of the day because I was about to record a podcast.
“What’s a podcast?” one of the young crew asked.
“It’s an Internet radio show,” I explained.
“Oh,” he said, “I have heard a few of those. But what’s a podcast exactly?”
I then launched into an impromptu lesson on podcasts but it dawned on me that this fellow, like about 20 percent of Americans, was indeed listening to a podcast … and like the majority of the world, he didn’t know what a podcast is.
This underscores some very interesting research revealed on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion. Calling a podcast a podcast is confusing to many people. We don’t call an online magazine a printcast. It’s still a magazine. We don’t call an online newspaper a journalcast. It’s still a newspaper.
Why do we treat audio differently?
One podcaster who has broken away from the podpack is Mike Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and the talented host of the SME podcast.
“We call the Social Media Marketing podcast an on-demand talk radio show,” he said, “because everyone knows what talk radio is, and on-demand is an easy way to distinguish it from traditional radio.”
This might seem trivial until you hear the explanation from my podcast … er … on demand talk radio show … co-host Tom Webster and why this nuance might be a huge hurdle to mainstream growth. I learned something important through this discussion and I think you will too.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
If you can’t access the podcast above, click on this link to listen to Episode 47
- Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
- Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide
- Click here for the show’s RSS feed – for Android listeners.
- Find the podcast on Stitcher
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