Lead Nurturing Starts with Segmentation Posted on July 21, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Even though it’s July, I can’t help but have the winter holidays on my mind. It’s not that I’m itching to sing Christmas carols, or can’t wait to shovel snow. It’s that I’d like a relaxing holiday that doesn’t involve navigating icy mall parking lots at the last minute, or ringing up staggering rush shipping charges. You see, it takes time to find the perfect gift for each special someone on your list. It would be much simpler if you could just buy 25 pairs of lipstick red Isotoners in a ladies size small and call it a day. But imagine the holiday woes. Your teenage nephew would scoff, and your kids would probably cry. Even your aunt might be hurt that you didn’t remember that her favorite color is lilac, not red. Let’s face it, most of your fuzzy glove gifts will find their way to the Goodwill bin or the trash. In gift-giving, and in marketing, there’s no one-size-fits all solution. Just like an ill-received gift, a generic email blast is going to end up in the trash. That’s where segmentation comes in. Organizing your prospects by their unique preferences helps you tailor your message to their needs. It’s kind of like getting your aunt the right size slippers in her favorite shade of purple. It shows you care, and shows you can be trusted. For prospects, sending messaging that fits them like a glove keeps them engaged with you until they are ready to buy. So how can you start segmenting your contacts? First, think about organizing contacts by status. This designates their place in the sales funnel, from a fresh new lead, to a promising prospect, to a hot opportunity, to a new customer who hopefully buys from you again. Then, to get even more targeted, segment your contacts into two or three buckets using their unique characteristics and interests. At Hatchbuck, we refer to these unique buckets as personas, a realistic portrayal of your ideal type of customer. But wait…what if you don’t really know what your contacts are interested in, or which of your solutions might fit them best? This is where marketing automation really shines. With marketing automation, you can dynamically tag contacts using forms, link actions, and webpage tracking. So instead of manually updating your contacts, their online actions automatically sort them into the right bucket, based on the pages they visit, the forms they fill out, and the links they click. With your contacts segmented by their status and interests, and tagged in your database, it’s easy to determine the type of messages that will fit like a glove.
An Easy Guide to Creating Customer Personas Posted on April 16, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Customer personas are the foundation of personalized marketing that converts. Armed with airtight personas, you can address your prospects’ pain-points and tap into the motivation behind their decision to buy. Customer Persona: A fictional person, rooted in research, that represents the needs and interests of your audience. Hint: Learn why personas are an important building block for marketing in our Simple Introduction to Customer Personas. Personas are fictional people, but to understand their motivations and challenges, you want them to feel as real as possible. To build an effective persona for each segment of your audience: Create an identity. Understand their day-to-day challenges. Uncover the problems that your business can help solve. Bonus: Grab our Persona Workbook to start building your own personas. Craft an Identity Find out who your persona is and give them a backstory. Ask: What is their name? What generation are they from? What is their home life like? What is their level of education? Joe the single twenty-something is going to have different motivations than Mary the 40-something divorcée with 2.5 kids. Construct a Day-in-the-Life Think about the routines and processes your persona embarks upon every day. Ask questions like: Where do they go every day? Do they wake up and head to the office each day? Are they the jet-setting type? How do they communicate? Do they pick up the phone and dial? Do they send out a Tweet? What is their role? Do they wear many hats each day? Are they in a stringent position? How do they work? Are they managing a team? Do they work independently? What is the best way to reach them? Are they tech-savvy? Are they technically challenged? What personality characteristics do they possess? Are they goal oriented? Do they tend to be complacent? What is their environment like? Are they suburbanites? City folk? Use insights about the daily achievements, struggles, and processes of your personas uncover what motivates them to take action. Uncover Pain-Points Hypothesize, then validate through research (more on that below), the biggest challenges your persona might face. What problems does your persona have? Where do their obstacles intersect with your expertise? What specific challenges can you help them overcome? Once you’ve tapped into your customers’ challenges you can: Develop value-added content that solves a problem for your customers, keeping your business top-of-mind. Position your products and services in a way that addresses their challenges. Create new programs, products, and service offerings that meet their needs. Persona Research Personas are imaginary, but they are rooted in real life. One of the advantages of being a small business owner is that you connect with your customers every day. Likely, you’re more in touch with your customers than say the CEO or VP of Marketing at a large corporation. The first versions of your personas might be built on educated guesses and hypothesis. That’s a great start, since you innately know things about your customer base. But don’t assume anything. Reach out to your customers and prospects in your target market to continue to learn about their identity, motivations and challenges. Continue to revisit your personas and let them evolve as you discover more about their real-life counterparts. Do this by meeting with customers in person, creating places for feedback at your brick and mortar location, or sending out quarterly surveys with tools like Surveygizmo or Survey Monkey. When you try to be everything to everyone, you spread yourself too thin and end up being nothing to no one. Instead, develop personas based on the 2 or 3 main types of customers you have. Use your personas to create messaging and content that feels like it’s meant for a single person, and everyone will feel like you’re reaching out to them individually. Ready to get started building your personas? Grab our handy Persona Workbook and start building personas for the 2 to 3 main types of customers that you sell to.
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.