SearchLove Boston 2013_Rebecca Churt_Why Personas should be central to your content strategy
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
14 likes•3,683 views
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
More from Distilled
More from Distilled (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
SearchLove Boston 2013_Rebecca Churt_Why Personas should be central to your content strategy
- 1. Personas.
- 2. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. Peter Drucker “
- 3. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. Peter Drucker “ SEO G
- 4. 1. Improve seo, marketing & communication. 2. Attract ideal customers. 3. Reach goals faster. PERSONAS
- 5. WHAT ARE PERSONAS • Representation of a group of people • Your ideal customer avatar • Personas are archetypes that describe the various goals and observed behavior patterns. • A targeted demographic, attitude or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product.
- 6. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES 1. Know your audience. • Are they mobile users? • Which browsers do they use? 2. Understand and define goals • What motivates them • What keeps them engaged • Have that drive your content 3. Assign value for personas • Missed attributable ROI for SEOs • Organize around high value personas first
- 8. Searche r Query “keyword” Intent Detection • Who • Where • History • Personalized • Social • Etc. Action • Sign up • Subscribe • Demo request • Starts a trial • Etc. Who is this? PRE - PERSONAS
- 9. Huma n Query “inbound” Profile • Mark • Boston • 3 past visits • Subscribed to blog • B2b • Etc. Recommendation • Display demo request My name is Mark. POST - PERSONAS
- 10. • First list all the common traits of your ideal customers. Both demographic and psychographic. • Then, roll all those commonalities into ONE person. • Give them a full identity (name, age, occupation, hair color, family, etc.). • Pull an image from the internet. Caution: This is an INTERNAL exercise for you so it’s nothing you’re going to share publicly. BUILDING PERSONAS
- 12. 1. What is their demographic information? 2. What is their job and level of seniority? 3. What does a day in their life look like? 4. What are their pain points? What do you help them solve? 5. What do they value most? What are their goals? 6. Where do they go for information? 7. What experience are they looking for when seeking out your products or services? 8. What are their most common objections to your product or service? GET THE BASICS
- 13. • What keywords would the buyer use to search for a solution like ours? • Where would the buyer look for information on a solution like ours? • What influencers and thought leaders is the buyer familiar with in the industry? • What type of content would the prospective buyer want to see and use to learn more about a solution like ours? • What other companies is the prospect aware of that offer a solution like ours? • What trends does the buyer see in the industry? • What are the typical titles and roles of the prospective buyer? • What is a problem in the industry that our business can solve? WHAT TO ASK
- 16. MARKETING MARK Profile • Professional marketer (VP, Director, Manager) • Mid-sized company (25-200 employees) • Small marketing team (1-5 people) • BComm (BU), MBA (Babson) • 42, Married, 2 Kids (10 and 6) Goals • Support sales with collateral and leads • Manage company communications • Build awareness Challenges • Too much to do • Not sure how to get there • Marketing tool and channel mess • Easy to use tools that make his life easier • Learn inbound marketing best practices • Easier reporting to sales and CEO Loves HubSpot because
- 17. G
- 18. © 2007 PTC A PERSONAS’ JOURNEY What is it? Who are you? Consequences of not having it? Why should I choose you? Expert and peer validation Create Awareness Blogs, Ads, Web Banners, PR (Customer stories), Articles (Industry Trends), Analyst Papers, Case Studies … Be Educational eBooks (or buyers guide), Freemiums, Blogs, Independent Articles, Industry White Papers, Webinars, Events … Provide Validation Webinars, Podcasts, Seminars, Multimedia, 10 Reasons Why, Trials, Customer References … Close Sales Presentations, Topic Sheets, Product White Papers, Customer Stories, Competitive Intelligence … Who needs it and why? What are my options? Education Acknowledgement Purchase Vendor& product comparison Searching Interest Established Problem Acknowledged Solution Provided Expert& peer validation Productneutral information
- 23. The Online Storage Solution You've Been Waiting For.
- 27. The Experience of a Lifetime. Prepare to be Wowed!
- 28. Ways Not to Stink.
- 29. WHY MOST STINK 1. YOU are not your persona. 2. You think they are real. 3. You are too general. 4. You don’t target first touch. 5. You forget about customers. 6. You don’t REALLY listen. 7. You forget to adapt. 8. You only have a primary persona. 9. You forget about their needs. 10. You confuse personas and job titles.
- 30. Do You Want Your Business to be Effective?
- 31. Do You Want Your Business to be Effective? SEO G
- 33. • Knowing irrational fears lets customers know you understand exactly what they’re going through and that your product/service is the perfect solution. • Knowing deepest desires demonstrates you have a vision for them; you believe in them and can help them get where they want to go. • When customers feel YOU understand them better than they understand themselves - you’ve established a deep level of trust. GO THE DISTANCE
- 34. Role in sales process Each page has goal Each page has a clear conversion path Reinforces your brand, generate leads, and supports customers Serves as a storefront for different personas Converts visitors into prospects and customers Personas + Website =
- 35. 1. Keep product and company info up-to-date on the website WHY: when someone is looking for information on your product/company/keywords, they can get it online / you get found by potential customers and analysts. WHY: present your business as a legitimate company 2. Complete market research and help establish clear value proposition • Keyword and competitor research in particular will help shape this conversation. • Learn how your personas search and what they expect for solutions. • How do they consume content? WHY: understand who your customers are and how to craft a user experience that meets their needs What’s an SEO to do?
- 36. 3. Create tools to attract more people and engagement • Tools include calculators, games, mobile apps, social media apps. WHY: attract more people, increase engagement (think: links) 4. Champion content • Includes blog, ebooks, whitepapers, datasheets, videos etc. • Publish fresh content to attract more traffic and leads and maintain engagement via subscriptions and syndications, expanding your reach. • Measure and understand how pieces of content contribute to SEO, social media, traffic, and market research. WHY: attract traffic, leads, engagement WHY: thought leadership / branding
- 37. WHAT PERSONAS SOLVE FOR • Aligning SEO with business goals • Generating qualified traffic • Generating qualified leads • Shortening sales cycles • Understanding customer needs • Knowing where users spend time • Creating alignment and consistency across your business • Gathering closed loop analytics • Improving product development
- 38. THANK YOU.
- 39. Q&A.
- 40. RESOURCES.
- 41. SEARCHLOVE13
- 42. Resources Blog posts http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33491/Everything-Marketers-Need-to-Research-Create-Detailed-Buyer- Personas-Template.aspx http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29583/6-Core-Benefits-of-Well-Defined-Marketing-Personas.aspx Persona Template – Free Download http://offers.hubspot.com/free-template-creating-buyer-personas Articles on Dropbox’s success https://blog.dropbox.com/2010/03/digg-day-2-year-anniversary-win-500mb-and-a-t-shirt/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/01/founder-storie-how-dropbox-got-its-first-10-million-users/ Slides http://www.slideshare.net/optify/using-personas-to-boost-online-marketing-and-seo http://www.slideshare.net/ipullrank/pub-con-personas-for-seo-2012 Podcast http://audioboo.fm/boos/75959-vanessa-fox-interview-search-personas
- 43. SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Team & roles Describe the team & roles Your day-to-day Who do you work with the most What’s the role of marketing within the greater organization Goals & plans What are the key goals Short term vs. long term goals Marketing plans Biggest challenge Tools What tools do you use How frequently do you change tools - pick up new, drop old How do you evaluate tools Example of a particular tool from need to evaluation to purchase to implementation Metrics/analysis What are your key metrics When do you look at analytics - monthly, weekly Example of monthly report How many web properties (websites/domains) do you have? Do you analyze separately or together? What are individuals measured on What’s an example of a great accomplishment your team or someone on your team had? What’s an example of a really bad time in marketing?
Editor's Notes
- More and more, online marketers are using buyer personas – fictitious characters that reflect various user types within their target demographic- to effectively reach new and existing customers. Similar to a marketing persona, creating a search persona helps marketers to accurately identify their target customer, to understand how users are actually searching for their business online, and to ultimately drive higher conversion. To help you get there, B2B buyer personas can be an essential, since understanding the goals, needs, and limits of a buyer are important to crafting the right content needed for SEO and social media marketing.
- Representation of a group of peoplePersonas are archetypal characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product a similar way. Personas are often combined with market segmentation to represent specific customers.
- What devices do they useAre they mobile users?Which browsers do they use?As an SEO you have the responsibility to understand and define user goalsWhat motivates themWhat keeps them engagedHave that drive your contentAssign value for personas Missed attributable ROI for SEOsOrganize focus around high value personas first
- Without personas you have this
- Without personas you have this
- What motivates them
- “What keywords would the buyer use to search for a solution like ours?”An (hopefully) obvious starting point for uncovering an initial list of terms and phrases to begin keyword research.“Where would the buyer look for information on a solution like ours?”This question helps uncovers possible link opportunities and social media destinations for outreach strategies.“What influencers and thought leaders is the buyer familiar with in the industry?”Similar to the last question, this helps define social media and third party site focus, which in turn impacts link acquisition and referral traffic.“What type of content would the prospective buyer want to see and use to learn more about a solution like ours?”This question uncovers opportunities for content development to be used for link acquisition, keyword strategy, and lead generation.“What other companies is the prospect aware of that offer a solution like ours?”This helps uncover competitive websites to review for SEO, social media, and content marketing strategies.“What trends does the buyer see in the industry?”Not only does the answer to this question help keyword research, but it might assist link building and competitive research.“What are the typical titles and roles of the prospective buyer?”The answers to this question can lead to LinkedIn exploration for industry groups, organizations, and important publishing websites; in turn generating link building and social media opportunities.“What is a problem in the industry that our business can solve?”The answers to this question help spearhead keyword research and enable a more refined search for third party sites and social media conversations to investigate for link outreach and social networking.
- what makes B2B buyer personas different than general user personas is the complex sales cycle of B2B solutions. There are usually multiple decision makers involved in the process. B2B Internet marketers need to think about SEO, social media, and content marketing efforts meant to satisfy a more diverse set of requirements across multiple personas.
- Houston says there “were a couple of important inflection points.” The first occurred after Dropbox released a demo video that captured Y Combinator’s attention and helped Dropbox secure an invitation to join the exclusive startup program. Milestone two occurred a year later when Dropbox released a separate video on Digg during its private beta launch.In that second video, Houston says his team layered “easter eggs… aimed at the Digg audience” into the otherwise mainstream presentation. The splash of creativity worked. Within 24-hours Dropbox “had 75,000 people signup for the wait-list.” They were expecting 15,000, tops.Not wanting to risk testing a buggy product on all 75,000, Dropbox carefully screened who could kick around early versions by extending invites through “a Gmail style closed beta.” Their strategy paid off. Just seven months after public launch Dropbox hit 1-million users. Roughly a year later they counted 10 million.One of two big reasons he cited for his success was Social Media Optimization. He built a cool video of what he was planning to build and posted it on Hacker News and got some initial momentum. He built a better video and posted it on Digg.com and it hit the front page and stuck there for awhile building a huge b/l of potential beta users. His video was SMO'd -- he studied how digg worked and built the video just right to encourage folks to digg it...he put a bunch of easter eggs in the video for the digg crowd.
- Everything in one place. The intro video on the homepage even explains that exact scenarioHouston says there “were a couple of important inflection points.” The first occurred after Dropbox released a demo video that captured Y Combinator’s attention and helped Dropbox secure an invitation to join the exclusive startup program. Milestone two occurred a year later when Dropbox released a separate video on Digg during its private beta launch.In that second video, Houston says his team layered “easter eggs… aimed at the Digg audience” into the otherwise mainstream presentation. The splash of creativity worked. Within 24-hours Dropbox “had 75,000 people signup for the wait-list.” They were expecting 15,000, tops.Not wanting to risk testing a buggy product on all 75,000, Dropbox carefully screened who could kick around early versions by extending invites through “a Gmail style closed beta.” Their strategy paid off. Just seven months after public launch Dropbox hit 1-million users. Roughly a year later they counted 10 million.One of two big reasons he cited for his success was Social Media Optimization. He built a cool video of what he was planning to build and posted it on Hacker News and got some initial momentum. He built a better video and posted it on Digg.com and it hit the front page and stuck there for awhile building a huge b/l of potential beta users. His video was SMO'd -- he studied how digg worked and built the video just right to encourage folks to digg it...he put a bunch of easter eggs in the video for the digg crowd.
- A lot of brands struggle with agility in marketing: thinking on their feet, coming up with original and fully custom responses, being innovative in the way they influence conversations. Marketers are used to running campaigns that take three to six months to produce.Everyone wants the perfect flying experience: cool, fun, comfortable and most of all, VIP. I mean ... who doesn't want to feel like they're part of the cool kids club? Virgin America does something that all of the airlines don't by not only promising this kind of experience in their marketing, but actually providing it in real life. Take a look at this ad, for example, that shows a cool and hip flight with blue lights, sweet TV screens, plenty of leg room, and wireless internet.
- A lot of brands struggle with agility in marketing: thinking on their feet, coming up with original and fully custom responses, being innovative in the way they influence conversations. Marketers are used to running campaigns that take three to six months to produce.appeal to your customer's ego through the fully personalized experienceEveryone wants the perfect flying experience: cool, fun, comfortable and most of all, VIP. I mean ... who doesn't want to feel like they're part of the cool kids club? Virgin America does something that all of the airlines don't by not only promising this kind of experience in their marketing, but actually providing it in real life. Take a look at this ad, for example, that shows a cool and hip flight with blue lights, sweet TV screens, plenty of leg room, and wireless internet.
- Nothing like appealing to your customer's ego through the fully personalized experience
- But what if you are not them. What can you do?
- Your personas will generally stink if you are doing one or all of these:YOU are not your persona. You think they are real. You are too general. Many don’t go in-depth. Forget to actually talk to people. More detail to followYou don’t target first touch. Often times people will target the C-suite, forgetting that they aren’t the ones necessarily doing the research or work in the end. Be realistic. They may be the decision makers, and you will need their buy in but don’t target just them.You forget about customers. Personas help us relate to our idealcustomers as real human beings.You don’t REALLY listen. You think you already have the answers.You forget to adapt. You have to update these regularly as your business and the market changes.You only have a primary persona. But there are secondary as well as negative personas. And then determine which is most important to your business.You forget about their needs You confuse personas and job titles. there's overlap between personas and roles, you can have multiple personas with the same role or one persona with different job titlesEnd result:You’ll attract less than ideal customers and business will not be funNo matter how hard you work, you’ll struggle to reach your business goals, yet won’t know why
- So ask yourself this. Do you want your business to be effective? Your seo to succeed?To be effective you need to understand the space you are working in and who you are solving for, which should be your customers.
- So ask yourself this. Do you want your business to be effective? Your seo to succeed?To be effective you need to understand the space you are working in and who you are solving for, which should be your customers.
- Wanna be like them
- When customers have a problem, they feel desperate and alone – like nobody in the world could possibly understandKnowing irrational fears lets customers know you understand exactly what they’re going through and that your product/service is the perfect solutionKnowing deepest desires demonstrates you have a vision for them; you believe in them and can help them get where they want to goWhen customers feel YOU understand them better than they understand themselves - you’ve established a deep level of trustDeep trust = sales, repeat customers and a long-term business
- Important for searchers and businessa good site plays an enormous role in your sales process and can help you to reinforce your brand, generate leads, and supportcustomers. think of your site as a storefront that serves different groups and converts visitors into prospects and customers.
- a good site plays an enormous role in your sales process and can help you to reinforce your brand, generate leads, and supportcustomers. think of your site as a storefront that serves different groups and converts visitors into prospects and customers.Keep product and company info up-to-date on the website Preferably manage old (archived), current (live), and future (draft) contentWHY: when someone is looking for information on our product/company/keywords, they can get it online / we get found by potential customers and analystsWHY: present ourselves as a legitimate companyComplete market research and establish positioning WHY: understand who are our customers and how to craft sales and marketing contentCreate tools to attract more people and engagement Tools include calculators, games, mobile apps, social media appsWHY: attract more people, increase engagement (vs. just a one-time visit)Publish content Includes blog, ebooks, whitepapers, datasheets, videosPublish fresh content to attract more traffic and leads and maintain engagement via subscriptions and syndications, expanding your reachMeasure and understand how pieces of content contribute to SEO, social media, traffic, and market researchWHY: attract traffic, leads, engagementWHY: thought leadership / branding
- a good site plays an enormous role in your sales process and can help you to reinforce your brand, generate leads, and supportcustomers. think of your site as a storefront that serves different groups and converts visitors into prospects and customers.Keep product and company info up-to-date on the website Preferably manage old (archived), current (live), and future (draft) contentWHY: when someone is looking for information on our product/company/keywords, they can get it online / we get found by potential customers and analystsWHY: present ourselves as a legitimate companyComplete market research and establish positioning WHY: understand who are our customers and how to craft sales and marketing contentCreate tools to attract more people and engagement Tools include calculators, games, mobile apps, social media appsWHY: attract more people, increase engagement (vs. just a one-time visit)Publish content Includes blog, ebooks, whitepapers, datasheets, videosPublish fresh content to attract more traffic and leads and maintain engagement via subscriptions and syndications, expanding your reachMeasure and understand how pieces of content contribute to SEO, social media, traffic, and market researchWHY: attract traffic, leads, engagementWHY: thought leadership / branding
- Content Level – Lists: Comparative
- Rand will be there. Special musical performance (not yet announced) at inbound rocks What is INBOUND?INBOUND 2013 is the largest gathering of inbound marketers on the planet with over 5,000 HubSpot customers, prospects, partners, and employees in attendance. INBOUND 2013 will take place on August 19-22 at the Hynes Convention Center, and will feature:over a dozen inspiring keynotes including Nate Silver, Seth Godin, Nancy Duarte, and Scott Harrison100+ sessions on marketing, sales, and the HubSpot producta rock concert (aka INBOUND Rocks)lots of networking opportunitiesmultiple evening eventsan awesome new experience called Club INBOUNDand more!
- When should you be using them?New Product LaunchMarketing Campaign DevelopmentSEO StrategySEM StrategyUser CommunityFacebook Fan Page/Twitter AccountWebsite Redesign and More
- Content Level – Lists: Comparative