How to Create a Content Persona (Tools & Techniques Reviewed)

HOW TO CREATE

A FULL STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

CONTENT PERSONAS

JCP example I EPIC PERSONA FAIL

Personas are a hot topic now: you hear this on every corner, everywhere you go.

BUT WHAT IS A PERSONA?


According to Marketing Land, content personas are representations of your actual customers — taking

into account who they are, what they are trying to accomplish, what their goals are, etc.


Personas are everywhere. In business, personas are known as “buyer personas”. In literature, personas are known as an “ideal reader”.

"Forget your generalised audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the

second place, unlike the theatre, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person – a real person you know, or an

imagined person – and write to that one."

— John Steinbeck, Author and Nobel Laureate


Why do you need personas? Here’s a case study explaining the need…


• One of the biggest department store chains in US • Operating since 1902 • Been an Internet retailer since 1998 • Famous for its discount merchandising business model, i.e

customers were dependant on coupons to receive discounts.


JCPenney was doing just “Oh-kay”.

So the stakeholders decided to bring in a new CEO who would rebrand the whole company and make it more

successful.


RON JOHNSON, CEO 2011-2013

“You should trust your business intuition and just do the right thing.”


Coupons & Discounts Everyday low prices

The new CEO decided to get rid of coupons and substitute them with everyday low prices so that each and every

customer would be treated “fair and square”.


_______________

EPIC FAIL

• Brand lost $6 billion in sales within a year • Shares sank miserably• Dozens of stores closed• $4.8 billion debt that is still getting paid off• 40,000 employees were fired • CEO followed suit

SUCCESSFUL REBRANDING


“I thought people were just tired of coupons and all this stuff. The reality is, [in] all of the couponing we did, there

were a certain part of the customers that loved that. They gravitated to stores that competed that way. So

our core customer, I think, was much more dependent and enjoyed coupons more than I understood."

— Ron Johnson, Former JC Penney CEO

WHAT WENT WRONG?


In other words, Johnson didn’t understand the JCPenny customer.

Sadly, he’s not alone in this…

DEFINITION I DO YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS?

Source: IBM and Econsultancy

PERSONASIS THE TOOL TO ELIMINATE THAT GAP

The gap between what marketers think their customers are and what customers

really are is huge.

RESEARCH STRUCTURE I PERSONA

PERSONASHOW TO RESEARCH AND CREATE THEM IN 3 EASY STEPS

STEP 1: Diving into research (tools, techniques, etc) STEP 2: Digging deeper (interviews, etc) STEP 3: Putting persona together

STEP 4: ACTION!

RESEARCH STRUCTURE I PERSONA

Step 1: Diving into research

STEP 1 I ONLINE RESEARCH

Let's start!

ANALYTICS TOOLSPERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ANALYTICS TOOLS

to collect demographic, quantitative data about your users

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ANALYTICS TOOLS

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ANALYTICS TOOLS

As insightful as this information is, it only provides superficial understanding of your audience.

To dig a bit deeper…

NEWSLETTER TOOLSPERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: NEWSLETTER TOOLS

to collect more essential data

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: NEWSLETTER TOOLS

Focus on these people

• Create a spreadsheet

• Dig into your list


• Download Rapportive (Chrome extension) • Run each email through Gmail

• Full name• Location• Company• Social profiles

So easy to stalk track people now…


Et voila! First data:


OTHER TOOLS

For a psychological portrait (if the person has an associated

Gmail account)

To research those who have interacted with your content (see

that in Notifications Board)

To monitor trends and topic and research potentially interested

people

ONLINE REVIEWSPERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ONLINE REVIEWS

to collect opinions about products/services similar to yours and identify customers’ needs

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ONLINE REVIEWS

Researching pain points and benefits that people have regarding the product/service:

ONLINE COMMUNITIES + FORUMS

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ONLINE COMMUNITIES

to research interests and collect more opinions

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 1: ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Online communities are a one big mine of hidden information. You only have to dig in.

Step 2: Ask Your Clients

STEP 2 I OFFLINE RESEARCH

Now that you’ve done a bit of online research, it’s time to…

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 2: GETTING IN TOUCH WITH CUSTOMERS

GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Online research is just preparation for what really lies in store.

To fully understand your customers, you have to personally reach out to them.


CUSTOMER SURVEYS

• Ask several open-ended questions: don’t lead people to the answers you're looking for – allow them express themselves!


OTHER TOOLS: Qualaroo & Survicate

• Open-ended q. • Multiple-choice q. • Exit interviews • With a small delay (i.e. 4 seconds) • Certain pages only or all website • Allows testing


OUR FAVOURITE TOOL:

Nothing can beat this


KEEP IN MIND:

1) Not all these questions are relevant to all companies! Decide what is important for your

business to know about your customers.

2) Don’t do this alone! Work in tandems with sales/customer service teams!


QUESTION TYPES:ROLE GOALS CHALLENGES EDUCATION PRODUCT/

SERVICE

• Where do you work? • Your job title? • How is your job measured? • What is a typical day? • What skills are required? • What knowledge and tools do you use? • Who do you report to? Who reports to you?

• What are you responsible for? • What does it mean to be successful in your role? • How does our product/service help you achieve your goals?

• What are your biggest challenges? • How do you overcome these challenges?

• How do you learn about new information for your job? • What publications or blogs do you read? • What associations and social networks do you belong to?

• Do you shop online or offline? • What types of websites do you use? • How would you feel if our product didn’t exist anymore? • What would you use instead?

STEP 3 I MAKING THE PERSONA

Step 3: Put Your Persona Together

Finally!

PERSONA RESEARCH I STEP 3: MAKING THE PERSONA

STEP 1: SEGMENT INTO COHORTS

• Discover similar backgrounds and environments • Segment into groups/classes based on similar relations

• Discover similar patterns in the answers: • Formulate group responses into one single unified

response based on similar characteristics

• Distill several personas • Keep it between 3-6


STEP 2: CREATE THE PERSONAS

Give personas a name, a face, and add bullet-point facts (for clearly presented info) and write a story (to be able to emotionally relate to the persona and its problems).

Hermione Harry Ron Ginny


Ginny, 22 y.o., “Travel aspirationist"

• Income: low/moderate • Occupation: communications intern/recent graduate • Goal & Challenge: Wants to travel but doesn’t have the means; • Focus areas: Europe + Southeast Asia; • Consumes: practical travel blogs for tips and travel hacks; luxury

travel blogs for inspiration; • Favourite social media: Pinterest and Instagram • Other: A typical “twentysomething" finding herself

EXAMPLE: fictitious persona for a travel-related product



“Ginny is a recent graduate in PR and communications. She comes from a small town in Wales, UK, from a family with a moderate income, and she didn’t get the chance to travel

much when she was a child. She went abroad for the first time right after graduation, doing a typical Euro-trip with her elder sister, when she finally discovered her passion for travel.

Her dream is to backpack around Southeast Asia. Ginny has no clear career plan yet (at the moment she’s completing a PR internship in a local agency, but she’s not sure that’s her

dream job). She likes to research ways that can help her save a buck or two when she’s on the road. Her favourite blogs are Nomadic Matt, where she gets to read about interesting

tips, tricks and travel hacks, and World of Wanderlust, where she finds out about the off-the-beaten-path destinations. She prefers articles written in a colloquial style, narrating about

personal experiences.”


• Low income → “How to save for travel when you have zero income”

• Struggles to travel → “10 Amazing Things To Do When You Can’t Travel”, or “10 Ways To Travel Without Leaving Your Home” or “10 Gorgeous Spots in Wales"

• Wants to go to Southeast Asia → “10 Killer Places In Southeast Asia You MUST Visit Before You Die”

• Has favourite blogs → guest post to build brand awareness and create trust

• Loves Instagram → “How To Plan Your Next Trip Using Instagram Hashtags"

ACTION: draft your first topics based on what you know about your persona



FINAL STEP: REASSURANCE

To make sure your personas are right, call up one valid representative who hasn’t been surveyed yet. Interview them individually to make sure that your research matches the reality and ask feedback for the topics you drafted.

If the gap is too big, reevaluate your conclusions and try again.

Do this for every persona.

STEP 4 I ACTION PLAN

Step 4: Action Plan

Last but not least…

FURTHER ACTIONS I BUILDING A STRATEGY

BUILDING YOU CONTENT STRATEGY

• Topics you will talk about; • Type of content you’ll produce; • Tone of voice you’ll use; • Channels for distribution; • Frequency; • etc

styla.com/content-‐marketing-‐for-‐ecommerce

You should start building your content strategy AFTER the persona research, not BEFORE. Why? Because personas will define:


Personas will help you to turn your generic content into something ultra specific.

Something that your audience will be able to resonate with.

In other words, personas should speak to your audience… Sometimes quite literally.


• The calm traveller • The solo traveller • The local traveller • The tech traveller • The foodie traveller • The business traveller

EXAMPLE: Persona implementation from

EasyJet chose a representative for each persona group and let them write a story for their travel magazine, making their content personal, relatable, and direct.

NOW IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO MAKE YOUR PERSONA ♥

Questions? Excitements? Let us know at [email protected]

How to Create a Content Persona (Tools & Techniques Reviewed)

Marketing

Transcript of How to Create a Content Persona (Tools & Techniques Reviewed)