Sam Birkett 0:05
Hello, welcome once again, I was about to say hello, good evening and welcome and but no, just hello and welcome to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam. I was just commenting on it being a lovely sunny day here today, which is lovely because the weather forecast was for horrible, dull skies. So I'm very chirpy and happy and today, we decided to talk about insights, customer insights to do with customer personas, which we've touched on in the past. But of course, so important to get this, I say, get this right, as opposed to evolve it and keep on improving our understanding of personas the whole time, and this cropped up because I've recently been doing a training course with some people in Oxford, and we looked at customer insights and a particular model of customer insights, which we'll come to, but it's Adele Rivella and it's the five insight circles. So I'll go into that in a little bit, but just wanted to kick us off really Sally with personas and customer insights, which sit behind personas, why are they important?

Sally Green 1:08
The truth is, we've all done personas, we've all sat there and thought, "Oh, I must do some personas", and we've sat there and we've written them and we've made vast assumptions about what they're like. I mean, I have had some clients who think they've only got one persona to deal with and that's tragic. But we can pop that bubble quite quickly. But it's the fact that you will have sat there and written, well he's called Gary, he's 35, he's got four children, he wants to buy a new car, he really likes cars, and he likes them to work properly. His real pain point is he doesn't want to be too expensive persona. And yes, that's tremendous and the next troubling, troubling thing that happens as you write it up, and you've possibly got some kind of template, and you've put a fake picture of Gary in there, and then that persona will be filed away, and you'll never look at it. Ever. But you've definitely done them, tick, done the personas, but you don't then take them out and think, now I know about Gary, how am I going to relate this to this marketing campaign I'm doing? How is Gary being embedded in this marketing campaign? And maybe I need to know more about what Gary really has, what insights Gary has about this buying process to know how to market to him properly. So it's not good enough just to say, because I know he's got blond hair, three children, is 35, is the persona. But it's not nearly enough. You're right, you need to go much, much more deeper into what presses his buttons to buy stuff. So you can't just sit there and go, "yeah, there we go, that'll do". It's not an answer, because we were doing just testing before we started talking and what Sam's got to say about the insight, but is absolutely fascinating and it makes you kind of squirm, you didn't think of it before.

Sam Birkett 2:59
That's the thing I think it did. It does make you I think this is one of those issues, isn't it where you just you think it's something we can always do better. And it's never going to be perfect, but we need to keep revisiting, and we need to keep working on it. Because I think he made some really good points there Sally about the particularly about what you do. So we'll probably come to this as well what you actually do with a persona, you know, how do you utilise it? And do you just do this sort of, well, this is part of going through the motions of you know, how we create a proposition and define our audience, segment it and we come up with a persona and then as you say, lock it in a drawer and that's that. But then actually, that process before, during and afterwards and continually this gaining of these insights, as you say about you know, what, what is it that actually, you know, so we build this persona, which is this sort of, you know, caricature of a person but with a name, with a surname, understanding who they are and what that segment needs and requires and what's driven them to this point of actually buying this product or service with you and I'm just going to let people know about the top level here so if you want to look it up as well yourself and go into this fantastic work, for example of this about someone purchasing an email marketing platform. As I say, it's the buyer persona Institute and Adele Rivella. And these five insight rings effectively, one is priority initiative, the next is success factors, perceived barriers, customer journey, and decision criteria. So priority initiative is basically what conditions business conditions or lifestyle conditions trigger you to actually look at getting this product or service in the first place. Then you have the success factors, which is well what are the outcomes I'm looking for when I bought this thing, then the perceived barriers What do I think is going to stop me from buying this and why? Is it a barrier in my own mind, a perception I have a product or service or someone else is telling me and then the buyers journey. So what is it? How do I evaluate options? What do I go through to actually do this? And then finally the decision criteria, which is, what's my role in this decision to buy this product or service and who else is involved? The cat's getting tangled in Sally's microphone. So, so...

Sally Green 5:21
It's making some very interesting buyer decisions.

Sam Birkett 5:25
So we were talking offline, weren't we about them interpreting that I suppose. So, these insights, which are more in-depth, obviously, doing this through market research, actually talking to your customers or prospective customers to get these insights, what you can do, first of all, isn't it?

Sally Green 5:40
I mean, you have to, you absolutely have to remember that once you've just got a new company or got a new product, and you've developed this buyer persona, you absolutely have to, then when you've actually got some real customers who have bought it, make sure your persona is right. Because you might be might find that you've been marketing to them, telling them that it's cheap and actually some of your customers saying when actually, it's a little bit embarrassing that I'm buying this cheap thing, it's exactly absolutely perfect, but telling my promote my friends, I only spent something but actually, I've got should get loads of kudos after spending 1000s of pounds on this car, maybe cheap isn't the right thing. So it's really important to go back and compare the actuality with what you thought the persona was going to look like and then start tweaking it and then start tweaking your marketing because you've tweaked your persona, you have to tweak your marketing because theoretically, your marketing is based on your persona.

Sam Birkett 6:31
Exactly, and I think to explain this to people in the simplest way is like, what's the customer need, you know, as you say, what's the actual need? And if you're trying to get to that, I mean, one way in which going through these inside rings of getting to this is have this which I find fascinating, I was saying offline about this journalistic approach. So this is a qualitative market research where you talk to a, you know, a statistically significant portion of your customer segment, and then actually saying to them, this is the best question I thought, which was, you know, what happened the day that you decided you had this need? What actually happened, what happened in the days leading up to that? You know, and it could be a business thing could be a while I was talking to Frank about, you know, needing to I mean, I use the example of this laptop didn't I just briefly bought a new laptop everybody. So I was just comparing my own buyer journey. And, you know, I was complaining to people left, right and centre about my old laptop video wasn't great for zoom calls, Windows Explorer started to fall over, I would crash in the middle of talking to people and doing things and I'd lose work and so those obviously, really difficult problems. So it was like a cumulative effect for me over a period of time. On the actual day, I decided I really need to buy something, Windows Explorer, I think stopped and I think I dropped out of a call and went right. That's it. I've had enough. That's ridiculous. But it wasn't just me involved in that as well. My wife was saying to me, why do you still have that laptop? You know, you need to get a new one, get it sorted? Do it get it done. And so when actually did the purchase, I did it within a few hours in one day, I didn't go around shopping around for weeks and weeks on end. I just went right, this looks good. I searched off what I needed and done. But that there were perceived barriers. And that made me thinking, Oh, it's probably gonna be lots of money. Do I really need to do it? Because I just tried to refurbish this one, which potentially I could. But what was going to give me my need was to, this is my main tool, which I use for all of my work and it's got to be right. And I've got to spend a reasonable amount of money on it because I have to have it working, you know. So on that day, it's almost like someone was interviewing me saying "Why did you do this?", and they asked you that question initially, then they dig a little deeper, and then a little deeper, and just go into all these nooks and crannies of your mind and how it works. That's when you get a proper insight. So you've got you can see who I am, you can see what I do. You can see how many kids have got where I live, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what's going on in my mind, what's the actual thing? Yeah, leading up to it, which I find fascinating, really.

Sally Green 9:03
We talked offline a bit earlier about the insights that people are possibly too embarrassed to tell you. So that actually when I'm buying a laptop, to be perfectly honest, one of the things I really care about is the colour. I really want and I really want it to be nice and thin, and look nice and I know that sounds very superficial. And I do occasionally look at you know, the spec inside. But really, you should recognise that that's what people are thinking and people are usually far too embarrassed to just go "Oh, no, I don't really understand the spec. I don't care". So it's important to find out because you could absolutely make the colour of your laptop, a huge marketing tool. It could be a whole spec for people who want to be you know, look cool in cafes, all of that kind of thing. So you could be actually unplugging a whole new marketing stance for yourself to make it work if you get these insights, right.

Sam Birkett 9:59
Yeah. Absolutely. Do you know what, and that's interesting goes all the way back to brand I think, doesn't it as you say about you know, if you want to be the one that's everyone goes, "Oh, what's that? That those green laptops all over the place? You know why? Why is it green laptop", and you start noticing them and you go, "Well, what's all this?" and then you ask them "Excuse me, it's funny how it seemed a green laptop. So I've noticed there's certain shades of green everywhere. And there's that there's like a shamrock on it or something". And you can say, "well, it's this fantastic new laptop company who are completely carbon neutral, and therefore they want to push their carbon neutral credentials in all being green", you know, Green Laptops Incorporated, whatever. And you go, "Oh, wow, fantastic". So there is that? If you remember the old what were the laptops they used to have back in the day gateway computers, was it?

Sally Green 10:42
Oh my goodness me. That's a long time ago.

Sam Birkett 10:44
They had was it Friesian cow print? I think they were from Ireland, funnily enough and I always remember that I think it's one of our first proper laptops, or computers, desktop computers in our house. And I think we bought several from them in the end but a lot of it was like was recognisable, it's there. It's you know, that was a part of it, you know, is when you look for a laptop, there's obviously gonna be so many different similar specs you can get but as you say things like colour I mean, again, big alert here this is not to character or characterise all females as being after colour, etc. Because, you know, colours, and I like aesthetics as well. But when I got this computer, my wife commented on the colour immediately, and said, you know, and quite often I know she's buying a new laptop, but she will be far more interested in the aesthetics or as I'm like, the here's the spec, but she knows she can leave the spec decision to me and say "Right, these are the ones I like, tell me which is the best in terms of actual specification". So that buyer decision-making process in terms of the persona shows that I'm influencing that, I'm an influencer, I'm not the end user. I'm not the actual purchaser, my wife is but there are things that are important to her and there's things that are important to me on her behalf that makes sense. So...

Sally Green 12:01
It's really interesting to work out when influencers become important. So is it just at the very beginning that you just think I'm a bit stuck, I'm not quite sure what to think I'll just talk to this person for a bit and then I'll carry on with my customer journey? Or do you start the customer journey and how intrusive are these influences? Do they kind of you're nearly there and then someone's just walk past you and notice that you're just on Amazon page about to buy something and go, "Oh, are you sure you want to buy that? Are you absolutely sure that's the right one because actually what I think is blah blah". So when did these influences arrive? And it might be that you need to market to these influencers as part of your marketing campaign, might need to be to other people because you know that we will do it the example earlier about people who are Apple people. If you're an apple person, you're completely Apple and Apple has lots of good things about it. But Apple people didn't seem utterly, utterly Apple, Apple can almost do no wrong. So you know, that these influencers is, if I said to him on my manic Apple friends, "oh, I'm gonna do laptop" he'll go "Oh, you're gonna get a MacBook?". "What do you think about that?" "Well, yeah, can get a MacBook". And that's it, that's as far as it goes. So you need to be really careful about how the influencers are involved in the customer journey. And you need to make sure the customer journey you're carrying, you're walking next to your customer, tighter and tighter and tighter. Because what you don't want to happen is to for them to get to that point when they're about to press the button, and then their friend comes in and goes if you're not buying a MacBook, forget it. So you need to make sure that you're right there all the way through their customer journey, otherwise, you lose them.

Sam Birkett 13:43
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's part of that really important to the mapping of persona, isn't it? Because you're thinking about, you know, then actually that translates directly into marketing tactics in terms of okay, well, do I need the perceived barriers which my influencers might be sharing with me to say all know, when it's going to be too expensive, or you don't want to do that, because this is the best brands you can utilise. And, you know, if you understand, you got to that thing of saying, you know, actually that journey of saying, "Well, yes, I was thinking one laptop, and they had three friends who all designers said to me, you've got to get a MacBook" and you go, "Okay, well, how do I offset that?" Is it having a simple information sheet or video it says, "look, I'm going to compare the performance of this against the MacBook, you know, and actually the MacBook is £500 more expensive". And you know, even like, you know, we talked about authenticity in the day, it could be the laptop, the company say "Do you know what a MacBook is more expensive? Yes, you may get an extra couple of years' worth of use out of it actually, because of the way it's been designed to design which being authentic and genuine about performance. But these are the benefits of our one. So you can have that. But if you don't want that you want a Windows laptop for use of doing X, Y and Z as a freelancer blah, blah, blah, then this is probably a good choice". You know, and then other people who are, you know, it's the type of testimonials you use, and it's the type of information you provide to help that decision-making process and people going, "Okay, well, yeah, I've got a little thing here, which I can shoot to my other half to say, you know, like a little video to say, you know, you're worried that this was going to, I don't know, was gonna get too hot, the computers often burn the house down, this shows that they actually have these energy da, da, da and above this temperature, then they actually give you your money back" and things like that, you know. So addressing those perceived barriers, working with your influencers, and just people who are on your decision-making journey is absolutely, if you've got those insights, you can actually preempt, and utilise that in your marketing and your communications to people. So it's really...

Sally Green 15:44
And this is, as you said, so part of your brand. And this is the kind of thing, it gives you such a nice kind of bulk of content. So if you're trying to think about campaigns, and oh my god, what bloody content am I gonna put out about this? I've got anything else to say about this laptop, talking about how other people or influencers might be... what other people might be, how people might be slagging it off, or saying this is better, is just delicious bits of content. And if you can actually get some authentic customers saying, "Well, I wasn't gonna buy this because blah, blah, blah. But then I was, because I was some everyone had told me no, it needs to be blue. But actually, now I've got a green one is absolutely ideal". That's just perfect, and a little bulk of content that you can use all over the place and it's completely Greenleaf. It's just really, really useful content. So getting your personas and actually getting deeply inside their brains gives you a whole host of benefits.

Sam Birkett 16:35
Yeah, absolutely and I suppose it's one of those things you said, it's getting these insights, and then testing these insights as well. So as soon as you've got this, and I was just showing this thing, there I was, I was sort of looked at it, I was thinking, gosh! I was saying to these people in this classroom, but all marketing is like a cycle. It's a continual revolution, and you're constantly learning, implementing, measuring, learning, implementing, learning, you know, you're just going round around, around, around, and so much of it is that, isn't it? It's that sort of, you know, actually, you know, we all need to do so much more understanding what we say, what makes our customers tick. But I'd say just identifying this need and having these deeper insights. And I just find it a really interesting thing to do. It's something that absolutely requires budget, of course, and time.

Sally Green 17:23
And time.

Sam Birkett 17:23
Yeah, that's critical, isn't it? Because I mean, it's one of the main reasons why people wouldn't do it, don't do it, have never done it, or don't do it regularly, because they've done that persona. They've done it and they go, well we spent time on that. Now we're just in the doing, we need to just get on with it.

Sally Green 17:39
And people don't know how to do it. I mean, a lot of marketers don't know how to gather together a group of customers and ask the right questions and find those insights. So it's one of those things that you could probably work out to do it and cobble something together and go, "Oh, it's almost there, oh, yeah, well, that's right". And then what you'll have is you'll have your initial persona down here and then you'll probably write up that new persona here. And they'll both go into drawers and you'll never look at them again. So what you need to make sure is if you're going to spend time redoing it, use them, use them, use them, use them. But outsource the skill, because it's a real skill, getting the insights out of customers, it is not easy, as you said it's a journalistic skill and there are wonderful, wonderful customers out there, we interviewed Amanda Classen, who does this kind of thing and she does it professionally. They asked for the right answers, they draw the right conclusions if you can possibly draw the right conclusion. But they get it right. So outsource it. It'll be quicker, easier and ultimately cheaper.

Sam Birkett 18:45
Yep, exactly. And I think it's interesting as well, thinking back to the interview we did with Amanda, I mean, I think if you get someone who can do this efficiently and well for you. And if they come back and do it again, for the next year's book, it is an annual service almost I mean, why would you not like your service your fire extinguishers or service your car, actually not fire since it's something that you use all the time you're using to be using customer persona and understanding of your audience segments, to market to them all the time, you like to use your car all the time. But if you never service your car, you would probably end up with a problem over a period of time, wouldn't you and the whole thing would break down. So it's really important, I had to get an analogy in there, it's really important to do this and you wouldn't perhaps, I don't know you might serve as myself if you happen to be a mechanic, but you're probably going to send it to the garage and get it done by a professional who can do it far faster and actually has all the proper credentials and blah blah blah blah. But it's that thing, isn't it, of getting that done, outsourcing it and investing the time money in it, because then I think that's where I think if you get provoked by you know, an insight that's very different and you go "oh my goodness, but we always thought that people bought our handbags because they had Cotswold in the name", you know but actually it's not, it's not, it's the fantastic variety of colours or it's the, I don't know, the ergonomic design that works so well, you know.

And in fact, a lot of our customers don't even know where the Cotswolds are. So why are we putting all over everything? It's just confusing them.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And if we were to focus more on these great aspects that people say is really great about our handbags, then actually, we could go far more international. And we could expand markets we hadn't even thought of because we've never tried to compete in that space before. And we never communicated directly about it. But this is great. And also, I mean, you might find an inside out about, I don't know where it's sort of like, you know, other halves of people buying handbags and you say, well, have we ever really sort of thought about them? Have you ever tried to market to them? Have we ever tried to get their details to say, "oh, you know, Christmas is coming up, you might want to think about getting a new little something and something else". And perhaps we hadn't but perhaps we discover that's a really valuable segment for us. Yes. But we never learned about a segment.

Sally Green 21:02
The other thing that I think gets lost in a lot of companies is that marketing people have got these personas and they might be using them properly and doing exactly what you're describing annually, reassessing them blah, blah, blah, and never ever, ever sharing any of that detail with sales. Which is a complete... and you see it all the time, there's a marketing and they've got their personas and then the people who are actually and realistically and every day dealing with the customers, don't have anything to do with those personas. How wrong is that? That in fact, the first thing you should do with a persona is immediately take it to sales and say, is this what they look like?

Sam Birkett 21:39
Yeah.

Sally Green 21:40
Like, are these assumptions Correct? Is this what you're hearing in the field? Because if you don't, you can be potentially marketing to someone who doesn't exist at all.

Sam Birkett 21:50
Yes.

Sally Green 21:50
Just entirely, even if you've done some questioning of the old customer. They're not out there at all because the sales team aren't selling to them.

Sam Birkett 21:56
Yeah, absolutely and it's I think it's utilising and well... utilising sounds... it's bringing people into the whole process, isn't it? Saying you guys are just as you play a critical role, in fact, you know, you're talking to the customers on a day-to-day basis, you're the ones who played the more important role than us. And we're coordinating this and sort of, you know, doing the intellectual constructs around it, but you are basically, you know, getting the intelligence on the ground, in addition to our market searchers coming in and doing this for us. But you're getting this and you're testing these assumptions and if there's something that was an interesting insight, I mean, I think it's also that important to the market researcher who says, "Well, is this sort of statistically significant? Or is this something that is just a pure one-off anecdotal piece", you know, and one salesperson says, "well do you know, what, no, no, it's all really important that we do x, because this is why one customer who thinks this is the most important thing". That's it, and you go okay, that's one customer compared to 150. Others say, actually, no, it's this. And then it comes into the decisions, doesn't it about you know, more senior management about, well, who do we want to target? Who do we want our customers to be? Is it our existing customers and keeping them and having a good return and lifetime value from them? Or are we after other areas so you can see how just influencers, you know, the audience you're interacting with influences your strategy, your whole brand, your whole purpose. And I think that's another thing that the persona has to be aligned to that purpose, that organisational purpose and brand. And quite often, we don't necessarily do that. And if there is a massive disjoint like, I don't know, say like we say, you know, our handbags are all about being in the heart of the Cotswolds and you know, just all the beautiful English countryside, we could have to embody that in a handbag,

Sally Green 23:41
They go really well with tweed.

Sam Birkett 23:43
Yes, really well with tweed, you can take them on your country walks and go to a nice Cotswold pub, and it's all about that, and you know, we're here just to sort of always promote and promote that lifestyle and that's it. And actually, you say you find out that no, people just... most of your customers just love the designs for being the designs they are or they just love the ergonomics of them and that's it. And you go, okay, so I mean, is it harmful for us pushing all this stuff about this brand, we have, this idea, this purpose of why we're here or not? And if it is a problem, perhaps is it cutting us off, but then that's your whole business strategy about well, what's your purpose here? Are you here to try and dominate the handbag market of the whole of the south of England or the whole world? What is your purpose? Well, that's it everyone thank you very much for listening today. In the meantime, if you want to keep in touch you can find us @meanderspod on Twitter, or you can get to us on Facebook. You can also email us which is meanderspod@gmail.com - So we hope to see you, or hear you or for you to hear us next time anyway and good luck everyone, take care, bye for now.