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Sunita is one of his top salespeople. She's 36, single, resists
exercise, and is partial to 80s alternative bands. She drives
a seven-year-old Honda Civic. She struggles with managing a dozen
salespeople, many who are 10 to 15 years older then her. She would
like to visit her family overseas more often. Sunita wants the
company to invest in a new CRM system to replace the contact management
system they long ago outgrew, but wonders how she'll convince
Joe and the company's CFO to spend the money.
Joe and Sunita are not real people, but they're examples of one
of the most powerful tools you can use to better connect with
prospects and customers: persona-based marketing.
Persona-based marketing reaches your imagination
Persona-based marketing describes who a prospect or customer
is, by also answering questions about their behavior such as:
what keeps this person awake at night? How does he spend his time?
How does she like to be sold to?
This concept can help you, as a business-to-business marketer,
by creating a tangible picture of your best prospects or customers,
and what would move them to initiate the sales process or to buy.
Bring together a group of employees who interact with your clients
and prospects.
Bring in lunch and a white board and brainstorm details of personas
for each of your target customers.
To stimulate your vision of each persona:
- What is the customer's role in their company: CEO, CIO, CFO,
COO, sales manager, purchasing agent, user, and any other important
influencers.
- What kind of company do they work for? What industry is it
in? How big is it? How up-to-date is it? Does it have a lot
of competition? Think of different company types to vary the
personas.
- Describe the person and their preferences: Give each persona
a name, a title, an age, and describe how he or she looks. How
does he dress? What kind of car does she drive? What does he
do in his free time? What kind of educational background does
she have? * Fill in as many attributes as you need to give a
full, rounded picture of who this person is. Then, turn to your
persona's problems and goals.
- Browse stock photo websites to find a picture of that brings
to mind the attributes you've added so far. Also, other images
might represent their favorite things or lifestyle. Keeping
these within view whenever you're working on the project is
a helpful cue.
- What does this person's daily schedule look like? What are
his or her most pressing concerns? What product or service attributes
would be most helpful in solving this person's problems? Is
he or she looking to roll up 20 databases into one, getting
ready for an IPO, dealing with a new competitor who has just
entered the market?
Then, when formulating your marketing messages, think about what
path this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this problem.
Will he or she turn to white papers or articles in trade publications
or Web sites? Would this customer or prospect seek input from
a speaker at a networking group of their peers? Let the personas
steer the route, which you can pave with information that can
help your prospect and customers move forward in their consideration
and buying process.
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