Once upon a time, not so long ago, the relationship between a brand and its customer was almost tangible. You could feel it. The direct marketers of yesteryears relied heavily on human intuition, face-to-face interactions, and the personal touch of a phone call to create a mental picture of their most loyal customers.
It's a nostalgic thought, isn't it? The memory of businesses sending out catalogs, the "regulars" receiving exclusive offers, and customer service representatives who could recall your preferences by merely hearing your name. Those were the days of true customer intimacy.
Then came the digital revolution, a whirlwind of data, analytics, and endless opportunities to interact with customers. Now, with a few clicks, we can measure metrics that we couldn't even imagine before: website engagement, click-through rates, and even the customer's path to purchase. We're inundated with quantifiable insights, but one question looms large – do we really know our customers anymore?
Consider these statistics:
- As of 2020, over 90% of global companies are investing in big data analytics to understand customer behavior (Source: Forbes).
- Yet, only 15% of these companies claim to get a significant return on their investment when it comes to truly understanding their audience (Source: Harvard Business Review).
These numbers hint at a truth many are reluctant to face: Data alone is not enough.
Personas: The Bridge Between Past and Present
The concept of a 'persona' isn't new. It is essentially a resurrection of the past practice of understanding a customer intimately but packaged in a more sophisticated manner for the digital age. Personas, built on authentic research, paint a detailed picture of the customer: their motivations, challenges, behaviours, and aspirations.
Why is this approach still relevant?
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Tailored User Experience: Knowing that a segment of your audience predominantly uses mobile devices means crafting a user experience perfectly adapted to smaller screens, ensuring their interaction with your brand is seamless.
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Effective Digital Marketing: Understanding the deep-seated motivations and pain points of your personas means creating marketing messages that strike a chord. Every time.
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Holistic Approach to Business: Personas involve every department, from marketing to operations. It creates a unified vision of the customer, ensuring every touchpoint they have with your brand is consistent and effective.
The Power of In-House Persona Development
Relying solely on external agencies for building personas is like asking someone else to describe how your close friend looks, acts, and thinks. They might get some things right, but they'll miss the nuances that make that relationship special.
Developing personas in-house has distinct advantages:
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Comprehensive Knowledge: Stakeholders who've interacted with customers, heard their feedback, and understood their grievances can offer invaluable insights.
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Flexibility: In-house teams can quickly adapt and change personas as audience behaviours evolve. It's an ever-evolving art, after all.
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Alignment with Organizational Goals: An internal team can ensure the persona doesn't just reflect the audience but also aligns with the brand's vision and objectives.
Conclusion
The tools and platforms of the digital era are powerful, offering us insights that the direct marketers of the past could only dream of. However, the essence of marketing remains unchanged: it's about understanding your customer. By blending modern digital quantitative analysis with old-school qualitative study methods, businesses can rediscover the art of truly knowing their customers. And in this balance, lies the secret to unparalleled customer loyalty and business success.
Share this article if you believe in the power of combining the old with the new to truly understand the digital-age customer!
About the author
Connect with Cath
Cath is Head of Strategy at MPA. A seasoned professional in marketing and media, Cath has worked across multiple Agencies and Clients from multinationals to start-ups