#'u can show people different products based on their purchasing habits' that's just segmenting i hate you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

topicprinter · 5 years

Link

Hey /r/Entrepreneur, I’m Denver, aka /u/LoomaHome!I’ve lurked here for a very long time, and being a follower of this subreddit + /r/MaleLivingSpace has been a big part of starting my business, so I’m excited to share.Along with my business partner, Ishaan, I’m a co-founder at Looma, makers of expertly curated and ethically-sourced bedding sets (and more decor stuff soon). We’ve been working on the business for almost a year now and we just launched yesterday!We’ve been on two quests: building a modular ecosystem of bedding and home decor products that fit seamlessly together and figuring out how to sell the softest possible organic, and fair-trade products for half the price of everyone else, and we think we nailed it.One of my favorite things are “How I did it” posts, getting an insider perspective on how Redditors have built their businesses, usually in industries I don’t know anything about. Since /r/Entrepreneur has helped me during this journey, I’d like to lay out my “Mental Framework” for how I approached business, in hopes that it could give someone out there a starting point for chasing their big idea too.But first, a little context, so you know how I got started. Backstory[TL;DR below]After graduating from college, I bounced around between the East and West coasts for different jobs. With every move, I’d go through my stuff and ask, “Is this really worth taking with me?”Usually the answer was “no.” So, I was arriving in my new city with few belongings, which meant I had to start all over to furnish my space. I’d get a few cheap things, live in the new city for a while, take another job offer, move again, leave behind all the cheap stuff, repeat. I absolutely hated redecorating, because it was so hard to make each new place feel like home. First a bedframe and mattress, then sheets, an area rug, side table, desk, wall art, and so on. I was becoming Ikea/Target’s #1 customer. Browsing aisle by aisle had become an obligatory pastime, and I kept asking myself “Why is this such a painful process?” and “How can I find someone else to do this for me?”Around that same time of my bedroom/existential breakdown, I had a month and a half between my move and my job’s start date, so I visited my one of my best friends from college, Ishaan, who’s from India. I had planned on spending a week with Ishaan then tour around to see all of the big sites (obligatory Taj Mahal pic). But instead of touring the country, I was mostly fascinated by Ishaan’s family business. He had gone back after college to run the textile mill his grandfather’s grandfather had started in the 1800s. Coming from a world of corporate offices and Excel spreadsheets, I was fascinated by the processes, the people, and the business behind textiles. Watching raw materials go in one side and finished products come out the other was incredibly satisfying.Back in the US, I was still thinking about that mill, while sitting in my studio apartment filled with hodge-podge decor that never quite right. Like Steve Jobs’ once said in one of my favorite speeches ever, the dots only connect when you’re looking backward. It hit me: What if Ishaan and I started a business that provided modular decor? You pick a theme you like, and then simply buy everything, from sheets to rugs and small decorations, that’s been curated for you in that same theme?Given that Ishaan could manage the raw materials & production aspects, and that bedding is one of the easiest and fastest ways to change the look of an entire room, I figured that bedding would be the logical first step, and then we could expand our offerings from there. I pitched my plan to Ishaan, he was onboard, and Looma was born!TL;DR version: Recent college grad got tired of figuring out how to redecorate every time he moved for a new job. Goes to visit friend in India while between jobs. Finds out friend’s family is in textiles, becomes fascinated by the business. Goes back to the States and starts a company with friend, to help people easily decorate their spaces with curated looks, and figures bedding is a good place to start. Looma begins! Analyzing the MarketWe had a vision for the customer pain point we wanted to solve, but we still needed to figure out exactly where we would fit into the broader market, and how things operate today. We broke down our market research into 3 buckets: supply chain, distribution, and consumer behavior.If you’re wondering where to find this type of info a great start is a google search of: “industry primer”First a size check: We knew the market was big, but not this big. In the US alone, home textiles (bedding, rugs & bath) is a $15 billion market annually.Supply Chain: Despite online & direct to consumer models starting to pop up, we found the vast majority of volume of the global home textile market is via outsourced manufacturing and brand licensing agreements. Much like Luxxotica owns 90% of the eyewear market, the same 4/5 manufacturers own 90% of the brands you’ve bought bedding from. It works like this: Manufacturer A pays Brand X, Y and Z to sell sheets with the Brand X, Y or Z labels on it. Brands love it because its free money for zero effort, but the problem for consumers is that most manufacturers are more concerned with volume than quality, with the overall effect being a reduction in competition – causing prices to steadily rise while quality doesn’t.So I can assure you, Tommy Hilfiger didn’t actually design any beds, someone at Indocount or Himatsingka did.Distribution: The distribution split in home goods is around 75% in-store 25% online, with the online portion growing extremely rapidly (less than 20% of sales 3 years ago). In-store distribution is split between big box brands who wholesale other brand’s products (Target, Bed Bath & Beyond) and specialty retail (West Elm, Crate & Barrel, etc.) who primarily sell their own brand. Online is split between Amazon and independent e-commerce (Brooklinen, Parachute, et al.).Consumer Behavior: Consumers repurchase rates are moderate tending to replace sheets every 18-24 months. There were fewer resources that specifically catalogued consumer behavior when it came specifically to bedding, so we used SurveyMonkey & Google Surveys to gather our own data. Based on our survey work we found that consumers brand recall & brand loyalty is extremely low. The surveys also showed that the future of online sales was bright with over 55% of customers considering purchasing bedding online for their next buying cycle.Our major takeaways from the research were:· The overall market is massive· The supply chain is dominated by incumbents with no incentive to improve quality· Online is the minority today but explodingEach finding pointed to the huge growth prospects for digital-first brands. Despite how overhyped “Millennials are killing [x]” headlines are, new buying habits (online) paired with general distain for the current players means a huge opportunity to cater to consumers in a new way.We want to create a brand that delights consumers, creates loyalty, and will become the no brainer go-to when buying anything for a bedroom. To do that, we know we have to do things that others aren’t. The Business BlueprintPutting the pieces together, we centered everything around one question: how do we delight the new breed of digital-first customers?Product: How do we delight customers with our product?The first step was to think of product as not just the physical goods, but the buying experience too. As I thought about my own hatred for decorating, it really boiled down to not knowing how to put pieces together in a cohesive way. We wanted to bring the same curation & ease-of-purchase focus that is so popular in Apparel (“shop this look”), to home goods. Today, whether it’s online or in-store, most bedding is sold piece by piece in separate sheet sets, duvet covers, comforters, blankets, throws, pillows etc. So we created a product line is focused on bundling and pre-curated bedroom “recipes” that are guaranteed to look good together. By making our product both the physical item and the more streamlined path to purchasing it, we're hoping to set ourselves apart from the average buying experience.Price & Quality: How can we delight customers with high quality materials and a mass market price?The vast majority of people we surveyed were “meh” on their bedding, except the group in the luxury segment. The luxury consumers totally reversed the trend with strong brand recall and loyalty. The takeaway: quality benefits exist, but you have to really spend to get it.So the question was: how to bring luxury bedding quality & loyalty at a price point that the other 98% of the market can afford? Brands like Parachute and Boll & Branch successfully brought Frette quality ($1,200+ sets) to the $450-650 price range by going direct to consumer and cutting out the retail/wholesale markups, but to bring that quality to the $250-$350 price point would require far more than changing sales channels from offline to online.This happens to be our secret sauce. Back to the origin story, Ishaan & his family have been in Textiles for over 100 years. I came to him to ask if it was possible to bring that $1,000 sheets quality to the mass market. The answer was no. Not if we went to the outsourced manufacturers like in-store brands and the other direct to consumer brands like Parachute. The only possible way would be to deal with the farmers growing the ultra-lux organic cotton directly rather than buying from regional or national cotton traders (not an easy task, most organic cotton is grown on small independent farms, so we’d have to reach out to a number of them individually), then we’d have to bring most of the major finishing processes in-house (like spinning the cotton yarn, weaving it, and cutting & sewing it). People outsource for a reason: it’s much easier. But with every outsourced process comes another markup, and we couldn’t afford that.So we followed the plan. We’re bringing the absolute highest quality GOTS Organic, Fair-Trade Certified linens to the market at a price that is literally unbeatable. Check out a quick comparison chart. Our complete foundation set (sheet set + duvet cover) is just $279. Compare that to Parachute at $550 (Organic but not Fair Trade), and Brooklinen at $249 (Not Organic, Not Fair Trade, Value Quality at Premium Price).ChannelWhere to sell? Amazon, wholesale, our own website? Where can we best meet our customer to give them a delightful experience?Right off the bat Wholesale wouldn’t work for us. Typically when brands sell wholesale they have to take a 40-60% cut on their regular retail price. So that effectively means brands that wholesale spend less than 30% of the retail price of the product on the actual materials & construction.Amazon has a ton of benefits, primarily built-in foot traffic. It’s a marketplace with high intent customers that are already searching for bedding and probably already have their payment information saved. On top of that, if you use Fulfilled By Amazon, they take the headache out of shipping. That’s super compelling. On the downside, Amazon takes a fat commission on sales, limits customization of the listing page, knows your exact sales data & popularity (Hello new Amazon Brand in your category), and generally owns the user experience throughout the purchase. In the end it’s something we’re going to continue to consider, but not right for us at this point.So we settled on selling via our own e-commerce website. Pros for us were the ability to customize the user experience with things like style quiz flows, owning all of our user data, and most importantly no marketplace commissions on our sales, but the cost was high, and not for everyone. When choosing independent e-com you have to balance with knowing it’s very expensive to bring traffic to your site, there’s a big upfront cost to developing a scale-ready website, and other headaches like integrating your sales systems with logistics systems. Sourcing & Other ResourcesIn Looma’s case, we haven’t had to search for manufacturing partners the same way most new companies do, but after working with manufacturers for non-core pieces of the business (like packaging) here are my thoughts on sources & best practices for reaching out:Alibaba: There are entire guides for this, but 1) always check how long each supplier has been in business + what their revenue last year was. If it’s less than 2 years old and/or their revenue is under $1 million, that can be a red flag that they’re not a reliable supplier, or too new to know their reputation. There are probably 10 other options in the same category with a more reliable background, reach out to them. 2) Reach out to at least 5 suppliers with your list of requirements for any product you’re looking for – even if you see a listing that looks perfect. A lot can be learned from the speed and level of professionalism in responses. After you narrow down to a few attentive suppliers don’t be afraid to push back on Price or Minimum Order Quantities. These responses are valuable too for determining who might be a good long term partner, not just supplier.IndiaMART: The Alibaba of India. Unfortunately they are much less organized and don’t have an internal chat feature like Alibaba. Be prepared to receive 10s of calls from suppliers if you give them your number. One big upside is that it can be a great place to source if you put in the effort, and a lot of the time I’ve found suppliers on IndiaMart are more willing to lower MOQs for new accounts.PortExaminer.com: While this isn’t a source supplier, you still shouldn’t overlook this resource. This is a bit of an insider secret, but import records into the United States are public record. That means you can look up your competitors and figure out exactly who they’re buying from!Sometimes you can’t find the exact records you’re searching for, but if you can, you can contact the same source suppliers your competitors are using, and ask for quotes for products that are similar to your competitor’s. Once you have a quote, you know how much your competitor is spending to manufacture their product, and you can figure out if you’re able to beat that price, and with higher quality.PackagingThere are two ways to go here. US companies like BoxUp.com, Packlane.com or Lumi.com tend to be expensive, or you could test the waters of direct from China packaging on Alibaba. For the seasoned expert, Alibaba makes sense, but if you’re just getting started, I 100% recommend a more expensive US option who will ensure quality.LogisticsGreat! Now your product is in a cool box, ready to be delivered by...someone. By far, my favorite freight forwarder is Flexport. Hands down the easiest, most intuitive, and modern freight forwarding service out there; I highly recommend them.PlatformFor our eCommerce we decided to use Shopify. They had the lowest barriers to entry and offered acceptable levels of customization.For our inventory management, we chose Ordoro. Shoutout to /u/gdpics from Ordoro for the great customer service! Final ThoughtsWhatever your plans and budget are, know that it will take 3x as long and cost 10x as much. Figure out your costs and estimate your schedule, and then pump it up. Give yourself plenty of buffer, because you will hit unexpected costs and scheduling holdups, and if you’re not prepared, it’ll knock you flat.Have a strong list of advisors and try to get as big and diverse of a roster as you can. I cold emailed so many people I considered to be my “Dream Experts,” but I also reached out to some people who I knew excelled at the lower-level functioning stuff, too.I wrote my emails to these people like, “This is what I’m up to, and this is why I’d love to have your expertise on this.” I was honestly shocked at how many people responded to me, and I now have an incredible board of advisors I can contact about different concerns and questions: Zander Lurie (CEO of Surveymonkey), Kory Stevens (CEO of Taft /u/therealtaftclothing), Brian Magida (Performance Marketing at Warby Parker), and a ton of others. Find those people, show them that you’re serious and know what you’re talking about, and you might be surprised how many of them are willing to help you, if you’re respectful of their time.Founding a company is a mental health game, and you need to take that seriously. Even though I’m technically a co-founder with one of my best friends, he’s on the other side of the world handling logistics over there, so sometimes it can feel like I’m a solo founder. Find someone — preferably a friend who isn’t involved in your business — who is willing to be a listening ear and sympathizer for those moments when you’re overwhelmed.Finally, once you’re at an acceptable level, just launch. You could go bankrupt trying to make everything absolutely perfect. There are still some things about Looma I want to tweak and change, but really, it’s ready for the next phase, so we’re pulling the lever and we’re rolling! /r/Entrepreneur, thanks for listening, and I really hope this was interesting for you guys. Thanks for being such a great community, and please, if there’s anything in this overview that you’d like more specific info on, ask! As for Looma, we launched yesterday on Kickstarter, and we we're already 75% funded!! Go grab an earlybird discount while the stock lasts!

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

0 notes

hotspreadpage · 6 years

Text

Are Personas Just a Nicer Word for Stereotypes?

We have soccer moms – married women who live in the suburbs and are best known for transporting their children to and from sports practices and other activities.

We have NASCAR dads – blue-collar, middle-aged Caucasian men who graduated from high school and like watching stock car racing.

And don’t forget the millennials – young adults who are entitled and lazy, live on their phones, and were raised by helicopter parents.

Are those stereotypes or personas?

The soccer mom designation, which came of age in the 1996 U.S. presidential election, and NASCAR dads, which became a target audience in the 2004 elections, are closer to personas, though too thinly described. And millennials? Well, those are more likely stereotypes that have been around for most of this century.

“A poorly constructed persona can seem a lot like a stereotype, such as all millennials want information delivered via mobile devices,” says Kevin Smith of Kevin W. Smith Consulting, which advises financial services firms. “The key to powerful buyer persona development comes down to three important factors: grounded in fact, functional, and more than demographic data.”

We posed the stereotype-or-persona question to marketers and got their input on preferred ways to develop useful audience profiles. And, in some cases, they share why – stereotype or not – personas aren’t a good fit for their marketing.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: An Alternative Approach to Developing Content Marketing Personas

Go deeper than a stock photo

Elliott Brown, marketing consultant and publisher, Back Office Basics, says:

A small business owner is not some guy in a striped apron who smiles with pride as he turns around the “open” sign and picks up a broom to sweep up his shop. That’s the stock photo of a small business owner.

A small business owner persona needs to have a name. Let’s say it’s Mike. And Mike needs to wake up super early every weekday because it’s the only time he can respond to emails without being constantly interrupted. He wears an ugly pair of khakis on Fridays because he hasn’t had a chance to do laundry. He’s down one team member, which means he needs to spend a lot more of the day working directly with customers. He likes doing it, but it keeps him from getting all kinds of other stuff done during the workday. Tonight, Mike has big plans to watch Friends reruns on the couch while running the payroll he wasn’t able to complete this afternoon.

Does Mike need a blog post on six tips to improve productivity at work? No way. He needs a post about six lifesavers to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

When your audience goes from being a cardboard cutout to a real persona, you and your team can empathize with them – and do a much better job of creating content, messaging, and calls to action that really resonate.

Go from a cardboard cutout to a real persona to create #content that resonates via Elliott Brown. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Brands Share Their Content Marketing Process

Think of a stereotype as a step

Erica Pierson, CEO, Acument LLC, says:

The term “stereotype” can be negative when the interpretation is so oversimplified as to overlook nuances. But we have to start somewhere, right?

In my experience with B2B clients, applying three mathematical and common-sense principles makes the stereotypical buyer persona a great starting point.

Acknowledge outliers and still tell a relevant story: A former client sold services to B2B companies, primarily targeting marketing directors. Research and anecdotal experience showed the target buyer was a woman, ages 35-45, with the ability to sign off on purchases up to $25,000.

One salesperson concluded the persona was a waste of time because he had one male client and his female client was 47. Since the other 98% of prospects did fit the persona, my advice was to use messaging that addresses the business needs and decision-making authority of the persona.

The risk of stereotyping was not in the targeting, but in the messaging. If we assumed that all women have children and drink wine, we might miss the mark. But if we assume all marketing directors want to deliver messaging and pipeline, relevant messaging should still connect with demographic outliers.

Use current data, not outdated anecdotes: Beware of anecdotes delivered in a loud voice with no supporting data. A federal contracting client selling software needed to reach senior-level HR decision makers. After conducting a competitive assessment and focus groups, our team determined the buyer persona was an African-American woman with a master’s degree, promoted into a senior role within the last five years.

The client vociferously rejected that persona. After much arguing, we figured out the client’s buyer vision was a white male over 50 with a bachelor’s degree. While true in the past, that information was five to 10 years out of date. The problem was not the stereotype, but the timing.

Test and learn the persona hypothesis: The notion of marketing to a static buyer persona is dead. Think of your buyer persona as a starting point and use marketing automation to continuously test and learn. Yes, you may have research that shows an 18-month buying cycle for contracts over $100,000. But if your campaign activity reveals a pool of prospects willing to move more quickly, use those data points to refine and target so you can keep improving your segmentation and content delivery.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Buyer Personas You Want to Use: The 9 Essential Parts

Don’t be lazy

Mike Schultz, president, RAIN Group, says:

The problem with personas is not that they are stereotypes but that some people are lazy and default to them. Paraphrasing marketing legend David Ogilvy, use personas for illumination, not support.

The problem w/ personas is not that they are stereotypes but that lazy people default to them. @mike_schultz Click To Tweet

Just because some people are lazy, not conceptual, can’t do analysis, and thus just take the personas at face value doesn’t mean that we throw the Baby Bernice out with the Billy Bob Bathwater.

When used properly, buyer personas are a huge contributor to marketing, sales, and overall business success. Consider the case of content juggernaut HubSpot. In the HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 article in Harvard Business Review, they analyze the personas Owner Ollie versus Marketer Mary. They both bought HubSpot but cared about different things.

So what? Well, it turns out that Marketer Mary had twice the lifetime value profit to HubSpot than Owner Ollie. This allowed them to target their efforts, apply marketing and sales messages, and invest the right amount of resources in marketing to one versus the other.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Build Buyer Personas That Build Sales

Admit the truth

Linda Pophal, consultant, Strategic Communications LLC, says:

In teaching an undergraduate PR course, I asked the students to develop a campaign to attract more minority students to the communication and journalism department. I talked about understanding the target audience, learning about their media consumption habits, interests, values, etc., and creating promotional materials to appeal specifically to that audience.

But in the end, none of the campaigns had a clear focus on a targeted minority population. In a debriefing, I learned that the students felt it was wrong to stereotype minorities.

The experience was fascinating to me because, inherently, advertising is about stereotyping. It’s about segmenting, targeting, and positioning your messaging to target a narrowly defined audience. It’s important to create buyer personas to help you understand the target audience from two perspectives – what media they consume or visit and what do they value.

Create buyer personas to help you understand media consumption & values of target audience. @StratCommun Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Better Understand the Size and Composition of Your B2B Audience

Get the facts

Lenay Ruhl, marketing specialist, Track5Media, says:

I wrote a drafted brand persona first based on my assumed stereotypes – visitors to a trucking job board are middle-age men who have or are looking to get their CDL. I then went into our Google Analytics account to prove what assumptions were accurate and which were not. My assumptions were accurate, though I learned 30% of the audience were women (a future opportunity). The data from our website helped me to create a brand persona that was based on fact.

Use data from your website to help create brand personas based on fact, says @lenay_ruhl. Click To Tweet

Go 3D

Kelsey Ferrara, content coordinator, Promocodes.com, says:

You need to acknowledge that you’re selling a product to three-dimensional people who are complicated and have a variety of interests and needs.

An example of a good buyer persona is this commercial for Beats by Dre, featuring YouTube star Liza Koshy. It highlights the complexities of its target audience (15- to 24-year-olds) without isolating other demographics.

youtube

Younger crowds will recognize the YouTube star and the struggle of working. Meanwhile, older generations will appreciate the professional/built-for-bosses angle. Most importantly, Liza Koshy’s comedy style shines throughout the commercial as entertainment that is family friendly and doesn’t exclude specific portions of the population.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Are Your Buyer Personas Ready to Take on the World?

Forget buyer personas

Hannah Whitehouse, content marketing manager, Bouncezap, says: We choose not to use buyer personas. We would be severely limiting ourselves if we restricted ourselves to a very specific type of customer. Instead, we set a broader aim of simply targeting online business owners and refining our website copy to strengthen our voice (fun, passionate, but serious about what we do). We know that this alone is what is (and what will continue to be) attracting the right audience for our product.

We don’t use personas. We limit ourselves if we restrict to a very specific type of customer. @HannaWhitehouse Click To Tweet

In a way buyer or customer personas are stereotypes. In creating a persona, you’re taking a broad ideal, and using your preconceived notions to determine behaviors and interests.

Of course, the rise of paid media, particularly Facebook Ads, actively encourages businesses to create personas and consider stereotypes to make sure they’re targeting their “ideal customer.”

However, there are some ways to avoid going down the dangerous route of using stereotypes in buyer personas. For example, consider the language you use. If you have a customer persona that says, “hipster, likes indie music, writes poetry, shops at Starbucks, owns a Mac,” you should be ringing alarm bells. In fact, the use of “hipster” alone in your persona is a red flag as it’s clearly stereotype territory. That’s all fine in the brainstorming stage, but make sure you step back and look at what you have down before you do anything with it.

Let’s look at an example. Moleskine, the Italian papermaker, is well known for its association with hipster culture. The previous hipster description could work, but it’s entirely stereotyped. Instead, you could describe the persona “young professional, pressed for time, creative type, willing to pay for quality, also brand-conscious.”

You’re not limiting your brand to solely targeting people who identify as hipster. Even better, create multiple personas.

Don’t go for average

Bethanie Nonami, market researcher, Memento, says:

As for buyer personas, aka avatars, I have always steered clear of them for one big reason. These kinds of profiles created by marketers are creating an idea for an “average” customer, but who considers themselves average? Are you an average parent? An average person? An average daughter? An average writer? An average marketer?

The problem with avatars is you end up writing to nobody. It has always seemed to me that creating these kinds of profiles is an excuse and way to procrastinate from talking to real customers! Why on earth would a marketer create a fake person when they have so many they could talk to in real life?

The problem with avatars is you end up writing to nobody, says @BethanieNonami. Read more>> Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Go Beyond Analytics to Give Customers the Content They Crave

Take your time

Chris Gregory, founder and managing partner of DAGMAR Marketing, says:

When personas are created quickly, without the collection of data, real-person insights and so forth, then it can be challenging to distinguish between a stereotype and a persona.

When quickly crafted, for example, a marketing team may determine that all people of a certain demographic act in or feel a certain way. All older people get lonely, right? Everybody knows that, right?

But, then the team discovers an in-depth study showed only 43% of older adults feel lonely. They do additional research on the targeted audience then the stereotype begins to be fleshed out, ideally into a useful persona.

If the business model is to help older adults become engaged in their communities through the company’s services, then the marketing team will need to get rid of the idea that all older adults are lonely and focus on learning more about the 43% of older adults who do experience loneliness to create a three-dimensional persona. How often does this subset of older adults eat out as compared to those who don’t feel lonely? How many older adults – in the lonely subset and the not-lonely subset – still independently drive? Even at night? Is health a factor?

As you understand what motivates your target audience, what his or her needs, goals and wants are, what behaviors he or she engages in, then your persona will leave flat, shadowy, one-dimensional stereotypes behind in the dust.

Conclusion

Are your personas really stereotypes? As these marketers reveal, the answer is only the first step. The bigger question to ask is how well can you and your team describe your target audience(s) and deliver that audience to meet your company’s goals?

Could you, as Elliott Brown suggests, write a 500-word description of your customer’s day? If not, spend time with three to five of your customers. Take them to lunch or for a beer. Spend some time learning why they’re a customer and most of the time getting to know them as a person. Understand the details of who they are. Then you can write that 500-word description.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Quick and Dirty Guide for Creating Actionable Content Marketing Personas

Want to know who fits the content marketer persona for CMI? You’ll meet them at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Are Personas Just a Nicer Word for Stereotypes? appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Are Personas Just a Nicer Word for Stereotypes? syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

0 notes