In this issue

Persona marketing

A new buzz-word is sweeping America – Persona Marketing.  Is this puff or an important new technique? You be the judge.

The idea is this.  You create a fictional person (a persona) to represent each of your market segments.  The persona includes name, age, even a picture as well as a bio.  Then the marketing campaign is considered from that person’s point of view – “what would Vera think about that?” 

You might write this off as yet more American puff-ware, but I can see some real advantages to this approach:

1. Developing the personas makes you really think about your audience and what motivates them. 
2. Seeing your web site from your intended audience’s point of view is difficult, but seeing it from Vera’s point of view is much easier to do.
3. It helps target parts of each campaign or web site to specific market segments. 

Good market segmentation is particularly important with a web site design.  If you are putting billboards up all over the country you have to try and appeal to everyone, but with a web site, different parts of the site can appeal to different segments.  You need to understand those segments to get the site structure and navigation right. 

Here are some guidelines I have picked up – references to the web sites I have shamelessly plagiarised below:

1. Create personas for each market segment.
2. Distil each person from observing real people and avoid stereotyping.  This means real research not just a brainstorming session.
3. Create a vivid narrative description – tell a story
4. Identify key attributes (age, sex, interests) and motivations and document them formally because you want to ….
5. Look out for needs and motivations that are common to many personas.  These are the issues to focus on because they have the widest appeal.
6. Don’t neglect minority segments.  On the web, space is cheap.  If you have a tiny market segment with a very niche set of requirements,  why not give them a section of the site.  You may be the only site on the web that really covers that segment well. 

For a big project research would include interviews, focus groups, data analysis from the existing infrastructure, and competitor reviews.  For business to business web sites the purpose is lead generation, and so awareness of the buying process and the people involved in each stage is a key input to this process.

The information about each persona includes:

1. A picture
2. Attributes/demographics (age, sex etc)
3. Personality
4. Profile / bio
5. Needs as a customer
6. What questions will he/she ask
7. Motivations
8. Stage in the buying cycle
9. Trigger words

As it seems to be the technique du jour it might be worth spending an hour or two getting up to speed. There is more information here:

• This presentation is the most complete description of the process I have found.
• Here is a good overview with simpler examples:
• And another
• Here is a useful note about how not to stereotype
• Dave Chaffey wrote a good overview.  The following links are from that artilce.
• The KM Column.
• A collection of articles and sample personas.

Business intelligence

What is valued online?

I was too busy last month to follow this up but a report is available from knowledgestorm and the CMO Council on what is valued online.  This is a survey of corporate users of the web in the context of purchasing decisions – mainly IT.

If anyone wants to see the accompanying presentation get back to me and I will forward the email with a link to it.

• Online technology content is a key ingredient in the IT buying process
• But satisfaction with the calibre of online content could be higher
• Respondents cited ease of use
• But invasive advertising was a pet peeve of many
• The main issue however was the amount of marketing hype rather than solid content

Marketing sherpa's B to B summit

Marketing Sherpa reports on their ‘B to B summit’.  The most important thing to come out in my opinion is that no-one talks about lead generation any more or even customer acquisition – (soooo 2004) the in term now is Demand Generation.  

Web designers – I hope you are up to speed with Persona-based web design.  No – Gasp!   I was so impressed I wrote this newsletter about it.

Apparently the number 1 design change you should make to marketing emails is to add your sales rep’s face.   I couldn't agree more..

Technical tips - Google maps

Take a look at Google maps (http://maps.google.com).  Simply type your post code into the search bar and it will probably take you to a map of your area (If that doesn’t work try adding ‘UK’. 

Now for the good bit.  Type

pizza near [your post code]

it tags your local pizza places.

Also try clicking on ‘satellite’.  The bar to the left can be used to zoom in and out – hey that is my block of flats.  Is that my car?

This stuff is stunning.  It uses a technique called AJAX.  Actually it's not new, just a way of using technology that has been around for years in a new way.  These techniques are so important I will devote a future newsletter to them.

News from the web

The Chinese just shut down a few more web sites they didn’t agree with.  Its not the worst thing they have done but an example of their approach to free speech – there isn’t any.  Should our Prime Minister and Royal Family be hob-nobbing with these monsters?

Search engine technology progresses albeit in fits and starts.  Now search engines are looking to give direct answers to natural language questions (What was John Dillinger famous for?).    Type that in google and you get the answer
“an American bank robber, considered by some to be a notorious and dangerous criminal, while others .. “ plus a link to the site that provided the answer.

Will we really be renting applications such as Word or Excel by the minute over our broadband connection?  Will we be using Word for free courtesy of an advertiser?   I frankly doubt it, it sounds like the worst idea anyone can come up with.  But it's become a ‘next big idea’ in the groupthink world of big software. 

So of course Microsoft has to announce something – cynics might say they are doing this in case some Wall St analyst thinks Google is stealing a march on them. Trust me, it won’t happen.

Do you want your home to be completely wired – I mean completely.  Well you have to be over 55.

Last month I mentioned our own wireless broadband connection.  This is one example of a trend that is sweeping the US.   The cable companies and telephone companies are not so keen on some more competition.  Especially one with such a relatively low cost base. 

Internet Gaming is illegal in some parts of the world, so people are worried that it’s a bubble that will soon burst.  They have to be kidding.  The Internet is global and the demand for gaming is huge. 

What is a splog – a spam blog of course.  A blog stuffed with keywords and links to your web site can boost your rating because it looks like you are popular with bloggers. 

The MSN toolbar looks more like an upgrade to IE6 to make it more IE7-like.  Not only does it add tabs (hooray) but now adds anti-phishing technology.  Get it now if you are an IE6 user.

Google continues to show good profits.  No wonder, the services are great and the adwords program is an essential driver of the ecommerce industry.

Google’s growth plans include classified ads as we learned after the prototype service was accidentally made available to the public.