A Simple Introduction to Personas Posted on April 15, 2014June 13, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Imagine you’ve been asked to speak at an event to a group of 500 people. How do you engage each person in the room? If you ask a public speaking expert, they’ll likely tell you to imagine the audience naked you are having a conversation with a single person. Then, they’d suggest you make eye contact with just a handful of people in the room. By taking your communication to a personal level, everyone in the room feels like you’re speaking directly to them. Today, marketers are taking the same personalized approach. Small business customers have become desensitized to generalized, batch & blast messaging. Instead, they expect a personalized experience based on their unique agenda, obstacles and level of interest in your business. To deliver this personalized experience, you need to know your buyer so intimately that you understand their pain-points and can anticipate their needs. Personas Uncover How and Why Your Customers Buy Your target market may be hundreds, thousands, or millions of contacts. Instead of trying to formulate messaging that is generic enough to address them all, lock your sights on two or three types of people on your list. For example, if you’re an architectural firm, your target audience may be made up of general contractors, engineers, and business owners. When you segment your list by these types of leads, you are able to address them in a more personalized, engaging way. Take segmentation one step further. Personas take initial segmentation one step further by assigning an archetype customer for each group. So, instead of thinking of a group of your customers as “General Contractors in the Retail Industry,” personas help you think of them as “Greg the GC.” With a strong persona, Greg isn’t just a general contractor. He’s a 45ish guy who’s been in the business for 20 years. He’s married with 2 kids, lives in the suburbs and drives an SUV. He struggles to find good tradesmen, and his business is built on repeat customers. He is tech savvy, but finds that the latest gadgets usually aren’t rugged enough for the field, so his business is often a late adopter. His dream is to keep his business growing so that his kids can inherit it someday. His challenge is balancing business development with daily business operations. Suddenly, you have insights into how Greg spends his days, what motivates him, and the types of problems you can help him solve. With a persona behind your content, you can create a much more compelling message for Greg and your prospects who are just like him. Personas keep marketing on the right track. Creating personas for the main types of people in your audience helps you to address the challenges they face and understands what motivates them to act, whether you are creating an email marketing campaign, sending out a direct mail piece, speaking at an event, or updating your website content. Offering solutions to their challenges through engaging content adds tremendous value to your prospects, converting more of them into customers so your business can grow.
Gmail Tabs Just Got More Pinteresting Posted on March 27, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Remember when marketers everywhere panicked over Gmail’s promotions tab? Well, Google has done it again, and is taking the promotions tab one step further. Gmail is experimenting with a new layout that resembles Pinterest, and is turning emails into an infinite scroll of thumbnail images. Now, instead of just a subject line and from address, marketers will be able to attract attention with a compelling image right in the inbox. Google released this image to show us how: What a Visual Promotions Tab Means for You The latest development from Gmail means that there’s even less room for junky, irrelevant email marketing spam. Your email content will still need to be personalized and targeted to your audience. And if your email lands in the visual promotions tab, your email image will play just as big of a role as your subject line does in getting your message opened and read. Gmail’s visual promotions tab is another development stemming from the trending dominance of visual communication. The popularity of online video, infographics, Pinterest, and Instagram all point to the ability of great design to help us digest information in a noisy and complex world. Tackling images and design may sound overwhelming to small business marketers, but it’s actually a great opportunity for the SMB space. Unlike a large Fortune 500 corporation, small businesses are nimble. As a small business marketer, you can adapt quickly to changes like this one, take risks to find out what works best, and carve out an opportunity to stand out in this visual inbox competition. In addition, I think that this new development transforms the promotions tab from a wasteland where emails go to die into a showcase for engaging eye-candy that will keep consumers scrolling. Consumers have already fallen in love with using infinite scrolling images on Pinterest to curate products and dream purchases. Bringing the same design to the inbox could mean great things for marketers. Imagine your best customers scrolling, mesmerized through their inbox where your email image and logo await. With Images Front & Center, What’s a Non-Designer To Do? As a small business marketer, you are used to being a jack-of-all-trades because there isn’t always extra budget for graphic designers or sophisticated design tools. But don’t worry. Design is really about solving a problem visually – and small business marketers are excellent problem solvers. You’re talented, and creative. You just need the right tools. Here are a few to get you started: Canva is a simple graphic design tool for the masses. Use it to easily create eye-catching email images as well as flyers, banners, presentations, and social media assets. DeviantArt Muro is a free, in-browser design app that is less complex than Photoshop, but more robust than MS Paint. Use it when you want to create something from a blank slate. Colourlovers compiles colors, patterns, palettes and trends you can browse or create. Use it when you need a little color and design inspiration. As you add “design” to your checklist of “Things to be Great at Today!” don’t forget that design and content go hand in hand. A stunning visual in the inbox is totally superficial. It might get them to open , but will your prospects click through and convert? They will if your content is as scrumptious and inviting as your email image. If you want to take part in the Gmail promotions tab experiment, you can sign up here for the field trial. Be a guinea pig now so you can deliver your prospects a great experience when the new layout goes live.