As a writer of of the marketing persuasion, I’ve been asked my opinion more than once of where the market is going in terms of traditional persona based marketing or the newer form of personalization that utilizes data available to marketers to target very specific people, (sometimes to an almost frightening form of accuracy).
As someone who values my privacy online it may come as a bit of a surprise to hear me say that I believe that many companies will start transitioning away from personas in favor of personalization, but that both will remain important for the foreseeable future.
Let’s dive into the basics of how to use both personas and personalization.
How to use personas
Buyer personas are the gold standard of many a marketing campaign and for good reason. Even though it might feel strange to create a “persona” that you write your marketing messages to, the alternative – writing to everyone – means you will actually write to no one. A marketing persona is basically a composite of the traits of your ideal clients and customers. You figure out what matters most to this “one” person, give that person a name, personality, and even a house and 2.5 kids if that works for your market. While the demographic info is somewhat important for creating the persona, the most important part of all of this is their reasons why.
For example, if your company’s main marketing persona is a thirty-two year old mother of three children who lives in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, her worldview and her “why” might be very different from a fifty year old bachelor who lives in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They will be drawn to different things, and therefore respond much differently to marketing messages.
The reality is that one message cannot target both of these people effectively, so creating personas can help you tailor your messaging to the right audience.
There is a sense in the marketing world today that personas will eventually be replaced by personalization. It can’t be denied that as data becomes more readily available it might make sense to rethink the way we go about creating our personas and in the future they may be replaced by a form of personalization. According to Andrew Friedenthal, market analyst for the campaign management reviews firm Software Advice:
How does personalization differ?
Personalization is a bit different from traditional marketing personas. Instead of targeting a hypothetical mother of three in Austin, Texas, you can actually target specific people who fit that criteria through personalized campaigns. This can be used to great advantage because instead of guessing whether or not someone might be a fan of Apple products for example, you will know this information for a fact. This info can be gathered willingly from clients and customers through the use of surveys, pop-up questions on websites, or even buyer interviews. It can also be obtained through algorithms, such as what Facebook uses to help brands target ads to particular people.
It’s the use of the algorithms in particular that can sometimes be considered a bit on the creepy side if you aren’t careful with the way you use the information.
On the flip side, if you do personalization the right way, the messaging can feel very authentic and the person receiving the messages might be more inclined to pay attention, since it will be directly applicable to their situation, likes, and interests.
The key to doing personalization the right way is to utilize data in a way that aligns with someone’s view of your brand and your overall brand narrative. Just using data for the sake of data can have the opposite effect you wish.
When personalization goes too far (in my opinion)
Recently I was scrolling through Facebook as I tend to do everyday (guilty!) and I came across a video ad that got my attention quickly, but not in a good way. It was a real estate agent saying that she had a client looking for a house with my bedroom and bathroom count precisely in my community. My first thought was, “huh?” My second thought was, “How the heck did she get my information?” Sure, homeownership is part of public records, but I wasn’t the least bit happy about this “in my face” sales tactic. First of all, no she does not have someone who wants my house. That is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Second, she didn’t build any sort of relationship with me first. It was a slap in the face sales tactic and it felt completely icky to me. Third, I’m not in the market to sell my house right now, so it wasn’t even applicable. This is personalization gone wrong.
Personalization is best when paired with relationships
I believe that the brands that will use personalization to the best of its potential will be those that are using it to build better relationships with their customers and prospects. Use the data to make the experience better for the end user, not just to part them from their money. As we become more comfortable with the amount of our personal data that is available to others online, we may become less concerned about personalization and companies using our data, but either way I do believe that brands who choose to use personalization should always stay true to their authentic brand voice and think about the benefit to the customer in every message.
So, in some ways it really is not that different from what we’ve always done with marketing personas.
Which should you use?
So, how do you know whether to use personas or personalization for your business? Of course, it will depend on your industry and your business model, but I believe both can be used with success. I’m not alone in that assumption either. I recently had the opportunity to work with Andrew Friedenthal from Software Advice to share my views for an article he was working on contrasting personas and personalization. He shared this with me:
“At Software Advice, we’ve been using persona marketing for awhile, so we’re quite familiar with how it’s done. However, since marketing personalization has become more prevalent in the field, I wanted to write this article in order to help small businesses—and, by extension, help ourselves—discover how they can make personalization work for them.
Melissa was extremely helpful in this regard. Her knowledge of the role that data plays in marketing personalization proved to be a key argument in my article. Without her insight, I would not have understood a key aspect personalization, and my article would have suffered for it.”
What do you think? Are marketing personas or personalization a better fit for your business model? Have you seen either a great use or a terrible one of either personas or personalization? Come on over to Facebook and let’s get the conversation going!