Who Are They?
More and more digital marketing plans have to live in a window of a fiscal quarter or less. But does that mean your consumers will drop off the face of the earth after three months? Of course not.
While more and more CMOs are restricting their strategic choices to the near future due to the still-fragile financial climate, others are well aware of the need to keep offering their most loyal advocates sustainable brand experiences that continually evolve and provide ever-fresh content. To that end, savvy digital marketers are constantly looking for novel ways to bake social media and volatile content into their Web presences to ensure that each and every user enjoys a sense of personal discovery and relevance.
The groundwork for this strategic architecture is the discipline of crafting personas. We look to develop personas that represent living, breathing individuals with diverse needs, expectations and interests. But, perhaps even more important, we work to learn how these personas mutate over time, in spans that may extend far beyond a few quarters and even into years.
Mind Meld
For example, at WhittmanHart we recently delved into the mindset of individuals interacting with the Web site of a national medical supplier. Whereas many marketers might assume a one-size-fits-all approach to serving up content, our strategists discovered that there were two personas that stood out from the rest. These two expressed highly divergent need states.
The first was a user who had recently undergone a surgery that would subsequently place our client’s products within her consideration set. This persona was facing a vast, unknown vista with a fair amount of fear. She had already received plenty of technical information from medical staff, but was searching for empathy and human support.
The second persona was an individual who had spent more time adapting to his condition, who was familiar with our client’s supplies, and who was eager to assist others in learning how to deal with their condition. We realized that the two personas represented a mentor/mentee relationship, and that, over time, the mentee might become a mentor herself.
As a result, our recommendations for the site included a suite of tools and resources designed to foster the relationship between these two personas, and to cultivate the transition of new site visitors into long-term advocates. This approach stands in sharp contrast to the more conventional strategy of simply creating paths from people to product, and ultimately engenders greater and more enduring product loyalty.
Defining Motivation
In another instance, while developing a digital presence for one of the most prominent philanthropic not-for-profits on the Eastern Seaboard, we explored the personas that might be encouraged to donate funds to the fight against pediatric cancer.
These personas precipitated into three clear types:
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individuals who had immediate experience of children with cancer via family or close friends
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individuals who associated more closely with the fight against the disease itself
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individuals who were driven by status and who were looking largely to associate themselves with the equity of the charity itself.
This third group had hitherto been neither identified nor correctly addressed by our client’s digital communications. Whereas the first two personas responded especially well to an emotional, high-touch appeal, we knew the third persona was looking for a very clear-cut path to content that established our client’s legacy, and an immediate subsequent means of donation. Over time, not only did our work cultivate this third persona effectively, but even resulted in an annual golf event that reinforced and augmented this persona’s subsequent donations.
These are only two examples of how persona development can refine a brand’s relationship to its users. Think about how you would describe the root emotion of the users who interact with your brand, and your brand’s response. Is the core promise freedom, empathy, wisdom, joy, rebellion or one of any other myriad emotions? To what extent does the digital experience embody that emotion? Are there multiple promises to distinctly different consumers? Are there possibilities to grow one kind of consumer into another, to build greater usage and loyalty? The good news is that, unlike traditionally static media, digital marketing is a dynamic chameleon, capable of shifting in ways that can keep your customers engaged long past the next quarter of your most recent strategic plan.
Paul Murray is creative director at WhittmanHart Interactive.
