3.1 : Target audience
Dr. Aleksej Heinze, Associate Professor at KEDGE Business School (France), Visiting Lecturer, Salford Business School, UK
When you think about your buyer persona, most of them are either using social media or using search engines as the two most frequent activities when they are online.
Some of the most frequent activities done online:
social networking, emailing, searching
Therefore, by understanding what the individuals are doing on those networks or on those search engines, gives you an insight into how your organization could engagement in a better way. So, if youwere to think about search engines, they are not offering their service for free because ultimately every single person who types anything into a search engine that result is stored and that data is used for marketers like us to draw on and develop our marketing campaigns.
On the other hand, in social media, whether you have actively been involved in that social media network or not, chances are your consumers have been discussing your products and services, and it is also an opportunity for you to learn what those individuals think about your products and services as well.
Asta Cepulyte, Chief executive Officer, Sharecruit, Lithuania
So basically we have two audiences: jobseekers and companies which are professionals, and we reach them with different channels.
Different buyer personas require different networks
Job Seekers: are reached through Facebook
Human Resource (HR) professionals: reached through LinkedIn
The jobseekers is natural to use on Facebook, on search engine marketing as well. Using search engine marketing, we can reach passive and active candidates. So basically, LinkedIn helps us to focus more on communicating with HR professionals and companies who make a decision to use those recruitments solutions and platforms. That’s why also we use LinkedIn in communication and marketing and we work with search engine optimization and marketing as well.
Colin Telford, Managing Partner, The Candidate Ltd, UK
Understanding your online audience is absolutely crucial because it shapes your business. We’re a small business, it’s independently owned, it’s 3 years old. And therefore by completely understanding whatour candidate base and our client base are after, we can adapt the business to make sure that we are providing a service and a product that is exactly what our customer is after.
Your buyer persona’s understanding can have an impact beyond your marketing – it should be communicated to all senior leadership individuals since this knowledge shapes your business offerings as well as marketing communications
So by understanding exactly what their desires are, as a candidate base, we’re able to shape our product to be more consultative, for example, or be able to perhaps provide job roles more quickly for candidates so they can move quicker in terms of find a new role. By understanding the overall general requirement of our online persona and our customer base, then we can segment accordingly, provide messages through marketing as and when needed. And therefore this will equate to commercial benefit for us at The Candidate.
Kristina Chokoeva, Marketing Director, DINO, Bulgaria
For example, our in-page analysis of the website shows that the most-often-cclicked place on the website is the section with women’s fashion. Understanding this trend, we have made some significant changes in our products line.
Buyer personas are not just about communicating marketing messages!
DINO have used buyer persona information to launch a new product range for women
Up until 2013, our female line consisted only of tracksuit s, shirts, and tights. However, our analysis convinced us that we need to invest in a wider product line for women. Therefore, in 2014, we launched a need product set called DINO Lady, which consist of casual clothes for women.
Exercises
Tracking trends
Google also offers insights that might be useful for you to understand the Buyer Persona. Have a look at this website and type in some of the keyword terms that you think might be relevant for your buyer persona – are these growing or reducing in popularity?
https://www.google.com/trends/
Trends beyond Google
Beware that Google Trends only shows Google users search behaviour. If you are looking at other markets such as Russia, other search engines are more relevant to see, for example:
BING also offers some insights on trends www.bing.com/trends/2014/
If you have a Facebook account you can have a look at a tool that is called Audience Insights
https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience_insights/
Additional materials
Search trends
Here is an example of trends visualisation during the Football World Cup 2014 showing the Football fans’ search behaviour…
References
Gilbert, L. (2000). Marketing functional foods: how to reach your target audience.
http://agbioforum.org/v3n1/v3n1a05…
Andreasen, A. R., & Kotler, P. (2008). Strategic marketing for nonprofit organizations (pp. 44-53). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
http://www.researchgate.net/profil…
De Bruin, T., Freeze, R., Kaulkarni, U., & Rosemann, M. (2005). Understanding the main phases of developing a maturity assessment model.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/25152/1/…
Butler, B. J., Tyrrell, M., Feinberg, G., VanManen, S., Wiseman, L., & Wallinger, S. (2007). Understanding and reaching family forest owners: lessons from social marketing research. Journal of Forestry, 105(7), 348-357
http://old.interfacesouth.org/chan…
Pleae see chapter 3 links below:
3.0 Buyer persona development
3.2 Planning integration of search and social media
3.3 Keyword research for buyer persona
3.4 Social media channels for buyer persona
3.5 Develop keyword plan for a campaign
3.6 PPC keyword vs organic keyword plan
3.7 Develop social media editorial calendar