I was recently talking with Scott Levine, SVP Strategy at Kern (an Omnicom agency), about the need for personas to evolve if they are to continue to drive relevant marketing decisions. Below is Levine's perspective on what personas are, the challenges associated with using traditional personas, and how personas are evolving.
Kimberly Whitler: What is the history of personas?
Scott Levine: Key marketing tools, such as segmentation and persona development, helps marketers better understand their buyer or prospect. Segmentation is accomplished by defining criteria that segments or categorizes the audience by a single or set of variables: geographic, demographic, psychographic, generational, attitudinal, or simply traits that are specific to a product set or industry.
Then came personas, which was a way to put a name and oftentimes a face on the different segments. Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer, known best as the “Father of Visual Basic,” pioneered the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool in 1983. Cooper literally play acted the part of a project manager that he named “Kathy” while walking home on a golf course. He was pleased to discover that, even though some passersby were quizzical regarding his running two-person dialogue, this activity allowed him to effectively cut through complex design questions of functionality and interaction. By conversing with “Kathy,” he was able to pose questions that he believed his persona would ask, based on the profile contained within the persona he had developed.
Whitler: What were the issues with the traditional use of personas?
Levine: There really are two issues. First, a big concern is that traditional personas are stagnant, but buyers are not. There was no synergy between the stagnant persona and the ever-changing mindset that someone experiences as they travel through the buyer’s journey. Second, the old tried-and-true buyer’s journey of awareness, consideration, inquiry, purchase and loyalty is also something that needed to evolve to capture the journey of today’s modern buyer. The journey has become more complicated and yet, this hasn’t been taken into consideration when thinking about consumer personas.
Whitler: You have created something called “Progressive Persona Profiling”. Can you elaborate on what this is and how it solves the two issues mentioned above?
Levine: At Kern, we created “The Modern Buyer’s 10-Stage Journey” as “Progressive Persona Profiling” tool (see below). Some may consider it presumptuous of us to define all buyer journeys for all products or services into these 10 stages. But what is important is that the journey isn’t linear, and that many of these stages can be traversed in seconds or together in groups. Also, some stages, such as Stage 7: Social Research, can take place at every stage. The more complex the service or solution, such as in large B2B marketing endeavors, the longer the buyer’s journey or buy-cycle will be. The benefit of the new progressive persona profiling is that it integrates a more complete buying journey within a more dynamic tool.
Whitler: Do you have a case study regarding the impact of employing progressive persona profiling?
Levine: ShoreTel is a company that makes business phone systems and communications solutions, particularly for mid-market enterprises. The challenge was that they had a new product launch and they wanted to understand their audience (what they feel and what they expected). They developed a progressive persona and content strategy. Their traditional personas were stagnant … what was wrong was that the traditional personas presented the company with a false target. When you market to a stagnant persona that doesn’t reflect the entire journey and lacks the big picture of what the buyer is going through, you invariably make mistakes. So, we set about using the progressive persona profiling tool to develop a more complete and dynamic understanding of the consumer. To do this, we used both secondary data and primary research (over 10,000 call center transcripts and interviews to understand the consumer at different points of the process). We ended up generating a lot of different insight across the 10 stages that was ultimately converted into distinct marketing efforts (e.g., videos, email, collateral, live engagement) and used to generate more relevant innovations. The results indicated that the new innovation met all key success criteria.
Whitler: Do you have a case study you can share?
Levine: We created one for our business—our target happens to be CMOs (see below). We used research to determine what went into each cell. After we created the persona profile, we created a messaging platform on how to go to market and converted the profiles into a contact strategy by vehicle. Then we converted the insights into actual messages that could be tested. The objective was to use the tool to drive retention and loyalty, drive consumers through the different stages of relationship development, and to enhance the consumer’s experience.
Whitler: Do you have any advice on how marketers can create a progressive persona profiling map?
Levine:
1. Always start with a decision tree exercise. Understand the journey through the decision making process.
2. Always look for trends in the data and use the trends to inform something in the map.
3. When you conduct the primary research, use that opportunity to validate the map (i.e., did you feel this way when you were doing x)
4. Decide at the beginning how many personas you want to build out (i.e., the ratifier, the influencer, the decision maker)?
5. Be clear about how the enterprise can use the tool before you start.
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler
