Buyer personas and marketing automation

During our reflections, we repeatedly touched on the topic of buyer personas and marketing automation, understanding how these models play a fundamental role in creating our marketing strategy.



If sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time is the essence of an effective marketing strategy, Personalizing the Customer Experience , it is clear that knowing your typical user/customer in depth is the key to the most effective and rewarding activities on the ground and to choosing the best performing channels according to their target users/customers.



Buyer personas: what data to use and how?

Demographics, interests and preferences, potential customer goals and pain points, and more: if we wanted to create our buyer persona profile from scratch, there is so much data and information we would have to use.



Very often, however, we tend to stop at personal data alone to create, for example, the targets of our campaigns (think for example of the ads we create on Facebook), forgetting, on the bulk email campaigns contrary, that what makes the difference are the qualitative data that do not emerge at first glance : values, anxieties, fears, frustrations, purchasing habits, that is, all the information that allows us to know our typical customers in depth.



That’s why market research, data analysis platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook Audiences, are just a part of the tools we can use: The most interesting data often comes from a direct comparison with real customers From Surveys and focus groups , as well as the Comparison with all business functions involved in the sales process , from sales to customer service.

Here are some examples of key data to collect:





first and last name ;

photo;

demographic information;

psychographic aspects (e.g. character, etc.);

Goals;

needs and frustrations;

preferences and interests;

experience and familiarity with technology;

purchasing habits;

desires regarding the ideal product/service.

The information collected is thus used to create detailed profiles of real people: when we develop buyer personas, we really have to think about potential customers in the flesh.



All this, as we said, is preparatory to the design of the strategy, but the identity of our buyer personas does not stop there.

How can we enrich it?



Microdata and Marketing Strategies

Buyer personas and marketing automation : advanced and dynamic profiling

While the qualitative data we collect in the first phase are essential to understanding the activities to be implemented and the channels to be used to reach the typical customer, they cannot be considered exhaustive.



In fact, much more information can also be collected during ongoing campaigns : think, for example, of the Browsing Behavior , rather than the Qualitative Data collected through specific lead generation and lead nurturing activities , or the Data regarding the purchasing process such as products viewed, added to cart, deleted and purchased in addition to all the Quantitative Data on the customer journey .



All this information is essential not only to enrich the buyer persona profiles, but also to better refine the strategy, optimizing workflows and activities based on user behavior .



As can be easily understood, in such a context, the use of technological solutions such as Customer Data Platforms can really make a difference, offering the possibility of collecting data from multiple sources and normalizing them at the level of a single customer view. All this translates into the possibility of profiling and segmenting your audience in an advanced and dynamic way , first, and then personalizing and improving the customer experience .



Buyer personas and microdata: people first, customers second

As we discuss buyer personas and marketing automation, and learn how marketing automation activities play an important role in the scalable and dynamic profiling of our typical customers, we cannot fail to touch on the subject of microdata .



Massimo Giacchino, author of “ Design Thinking,” defines microdata “ as traces and signals that people leave online.”

It is therefore information and data that users release, interact with the brand or simply satisfy a curiosity or need through an online search.

This type of data includes information contained in multiple channels and contexts and available for free.

Here are some examples:



profiles and social posts of our competitors' followers/fans;

posts in Facebook and Linkedin groups;

hashtags;

product review;

related searches suggested by Google.

These are data and information that, if analyzed well, tell us a lot about our buyer personas: who they are, what their needs are, why they might choose our product/service, where they can buy it and how they can use it.



Knowing your audience inside out is the first step to designing successful marketing strategies.

The data and information collected in a preliminary phase, also with the contribution of microdata, are essential to define our buyer personas and understand the best strategy to implement.



But we must always not stop at appearances, delve deeper and profile further. Here, therefore, the contribution of marketing automation can be successful at this stage, providing us with additional information on the analysis and grouping of our audience