You’ll often find in the corporate world, a simple concept will end up being complicated almost to the point of absurdity. The great Tom Fishburne takes a look at one such example in…
Personas…or “Customer Avatars”…are widely used in marketing. Put simply, they are a picture or profile of a typical client or customer.
“Marketers use personas as a tool to try to bring customers into the room — to help organizations be more customer-centric. They’re intended to help with everything from innovation to experience design to marketing and sales.”
When writing sales copy, the aim is to write as if one-to-one. Having a specific, representative person in mind can be helpful to achieve that.
But, of course, these tools have their limitations. For a start, how do you decide on a typical customer? And…
“At their best, personas can help visualize and communicate insights from research. But at their worst, they have nothing to do with the real world, let alone real people. Personas also often say more about the team that created them than about the customers or users they’re supposed to represent.”
As Tom Fishburne points out in his delightful cartoon at the top of this post.
All too often, what starts out as a useful tool…ends up taking on a life of its own…and becoming less useful.
The suggested answer to this issue is…
…back to basics.
Tom refers to the work of professor Clayton Christensen and his theory of “Jobs-To-Be-Done”…
“They just need to get things done, as Ted Levitt said. When people find themselves needing to get a job done, they essentially hire products to do that job for them. The marketer’s task is therefore to understand what jobs periodically arise in customers’ lives for which they might hire products the company could make. If a marketer can understand the job, design a product and associated experiences in purchase and use to do that job, and deliver it in a way that reinforces its intended use, then when customers find themselves needing to get that job done, they will hire that product.”
Put another way, what people are really interested in is the RESULTS a product or service delivers. They are not as concerned with the product or service itself.
Without getting too distracted from the main point, note that those results can be intangible…as in the case of luxury goods.
Now, for direct response marketers, this idea will probably not be new. Often we are concerned with addressing a problem and providing a solution. After all, one copywriting template can be expressed as “Problem-Agitate-Solution”.
I’ll add something that I’ve found useful, That is, keep in mind the circumstances or situation your prospective customers are in. Often, that will be obvious. For example, if you’re marketing to “Brides-to be”. Other times, you might need to dig a little deeper.
These circumstances will often impact on the problem your prospect is looking to solve, as well as providing a context. Identify this in your copy so that the prospect can “see” themselves and your message will be much more effective.
So, keep your prospective customer clearly in mind, but focus on what’s relevant and important to them.