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| Photo Credit: LinkedIn |
More people are online today than ever before, as millions are using the web for conducting detailed research on many different things, as we've learned in David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing & PR this week. Not only are millions of people online in general, but they're on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, among many others, and they're connecting with brands today like they have never before.
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| The brands that see the most success have a game plan |
However, there's one major difference between the brands that are successful with their online marketing efforts through social media, and those that aren't. It's simple -- the brands that see more success are the organizations that head into the game with a plan.
Scott also mentions that successful online marketing efforts find success because of their starting point; finding one or more buyer personas that they want to target. This is important for many reasons, and one that is more important than most companies think.
For any organization, it's important to identify buyer personas, because it will ultimately lead them to the ultimate goal for most, and that's more revenue, due to brand exposure. When trying to identify one or more buyer personas to target, it's important to look at something in particular that was mentioned in Julia Rudeau's great, informative post this week. It was mentioned that there are three users online -- the casual user, the business user, and the power user... but how do you identify these users?
It's important to have a plan. As a brand on social media, you need to try new things, and see what your community identifies with. Through your planning and engagement efforts online, you'll be able to identify over time who falls into each of these categories, and what type of messaging resonates with them the best. That's why engagement is so important, and why David Meerman Scott's 'cocktail party' approach to social media is accurate. "Do you go into a large gathering filled with a few acquaintances and tons of people you do not know and shout, 'Buy my product!"? (Scott, 57)
One example of identifying them through careful planning and adjusting along the way is from a social marketing campaign that I worked on for a client in 2016. The client, a former NFL player, has an apparel line that he wanted to gear towards a niche demographic, which was those that played a certain position on the field, both at the high school and collegiate level of the game. He presented our agency with research that had been done on these target buyers. However, after planning and adjusting on our part, we learned that the demographic that he thought was his core buyer, actually ended up only being 'the casual user.' It was through our planning and overall engagement strategies that found the power users, aka the big time buyers of the clothing line.
Brands should initially start by targeting who they think is their target buyer, based on their research, and then learn even more along the way, and adjust from there. One thing to to take away, also, is that it's important for brands to stop thinking like a marketer, and start thinking like a consumer. (Kerpen, 40) That's a key component to improving any social media strategy.
While the above video example is extremely (and very funny), it's important to connect with your users. Get them to follow you, and get them to engage with you. However, most importantly, brands and businesses should be learning about those within their online communities.
In Jeffrey K. Rohrs' book titled Audience - Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers, he brings up a great point when he says, "being great at marketing today is as much about knowing where not to place bets as where to place them." (Rohrs, 239)
References
Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable Social Media. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Rohrs, J.K. (2014). Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Scott, D.M. (2015). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning Scott’s cocktail party approach to social media. I think it’s a great analogy. I always say, if you wouldn’t do it in ‘real’ life, don’t do it online.
Your experience with identifying the power user versus the assumed casual user was interesting to read. You reiterated Kerpen’s point about thinking like a consumer rather than a marketer. That seems simpler because we’re all consumers. We know how we want to be approached and sold. Monty (2013) reminds us that consumers are wrapped up in their own lives and responsibilities. Most of the time they aren’t really interested in your brand. So what he suggests is for social media marketers is to focus less on what you want to talk about and instead, “put your efforts into compelling messages, creating remarkable experiences (experiences that are literally worthy of remark), and giving them reasons to come back” (para 5).
Monty, S. (2013). It's Time to Stop Thinking Like Marketers. Retrieved on February 10th 2017 from, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/25/its-time-to-stop-thinking-like-marketers
Hey Laura,
DeleteIt's funny... with the agency that I've been with for the past five years, we repeatedly get issues like that. The client will be coming on for social media services, and one of the first questions that we ask, is who is their target demographic... who do they ultimately want to reach? In more cases than not, who they *think* they want to reach isn't who is most responsive to them online. When they sign on for social media, we take into account who they want to reach, but also do our own research, and more often than not, find the perfect demographic that responds well. It's usually to the client's surprise (and for the better as well!)
Also, I love that cocktail party analogy. It's so true... people want to feel engaged, and not like they're being marketed at too heavily. That's how you TRULY grow a social media campaign... putting yourself in the shoes of the user.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post this week and loved being reminded of the cocktail party scenario. I think it's a great example of how to approach social media, as Laura pointed out.
It was interesting to read through your professional experience in identifying a core customer for a client and realizing that what he thought was his core customers, wasn't in fact so. I think it's a difficult task to place yourself in the shoes of the consumer, even though we are all consumers too. An interesting take on the subject was addressed in How to Think Like Your Customer, Handley (2013) where she states "fish where the fish are...you should know who your ideal customer is. But where are these people? Which social networks do they use? What publications do they read? What communities are they part of? Where do they go for information?" She further writes about anticipating your customers' needs and serving them before they even know they need you. Solid advice, albeit hard to follow sometimes as plenty of research must be done in order to serve your customers needs.
Lena
Handley, A. (2013, May). How To Think Like Your Customer. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226124
Hey Lena,
DeleteThe cocktail party analogy definitely nails it, I agree. That example that I gave was luckily in my wheelhouse, as I'm a huge NFL fan, and the client we were working with played on my favorite sports team (the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars) when I was much younger. Therefore, I understand the field and demographics on a much higher level than most would.
You bring up a great point too, in particular with asking "What social networks do they use?" In working in social marketing specifically for the past five years, the one thing that I can't emphasize enough is how different the audiences are from network-to-network. Sure, we know things like that Facebook is longer form, and Twitter is very short-form, but there's much more to it than that. The audiences are vastly different -- one example that I can think of from my experience is a client that I recently worked with for close to four years.
They're a client in the automotive industry, and I found that they're audience was vastly different in comparison between Facebook and Twitter. For example, on Facebook, their fans were more into discussion of topics within the industry, including new driving regulations enforced by their specific field, and they would *really* engage in long form discussions. However, on Twitter, that was never a hit. That type of content never really took off, ever, and I found that the things they would respond to the most were quotes, jokes, and facts; not so much topics of discussions.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteThe importance of needing to develop a plan and buyer personas is demonstrated in your example from a past client. This shows why it’s so important to do this step. I’m wondering how often this occurs - a brand identifying who they think their audience is until further research identifies them as maybe being more secondary.
The key to effective segmentation is mapping a different personas within your strategy. An interesting concept is determining who your user persona is vs your buyer persona. Maddy Kirsch (2016) says a user persona is like a biography that describes the needs and characteristics of those who will be using your product and a buyer persona is a broader description of who your target customer is (para 3). It’s important to distinguish between the two as the buyer is made up of influencers and decision makers who may not necessary be the users of your product.
It’s also important to make sure your product or service is designed to attract the user, but still displays its value to the buyer. Kirsch (2016) explains you will want to create your product with the user in mind as their productivity using your product will play a very large role in whether or not it’s purchased again or continued to be used over time (para 7).
References:
Kirsch, M. (2016, July 07). User Persona vs. Buyer Persona: Are Your Users Also Buyers? Retrieved from https://www.productplan.com/user-persona-vs-buyer-persona
Hey Julia,
DeleteThanks for response.
It happens all the time, you have no idea... where a client thinks they have it nailed down, but they couldn't be further off. Here's another example that comes to mind... I'm currently working on a social media campaign at our agency for a brand that sells nothing but pizza dough and sauce, with the brand messaging focusing on how it's better to make your creation home as opposed to ordering out.
We started working with this client about a month ago, and they were another one that presented who they wanted to specifically target. In the first four weeks alone, not only through posting, but also through ads campaigns on both Facebook and Twitter, we've found that the *real* demographic isn't who we thought. I ran a few different types of Facebook Ads that are seeing more conversions than ever before, and it's far from what the company *thought* was who they were after.