Buyer Persona Power
We had one of the best sessions we have ever had at our 3000 Club networking meeting on Friday morning. Tom Hinchey was filling in for group organizer Jimmy Sadre and, fresh with his copy of World Wide Rave, decided that instead of the usual 30 second elevator pitches we would try to get our fellow members more focused on some ‘new marketing‘ approaches using those all important ‘buyer personas‘.
I have to say, I think everyone really learned something from the exercise – so much so in fact that Tom and I are planning to do some seminars on the topic in the near future. We started with David Meerman Scott’s premise that “no-one is interested in your products except you” and tried to come up with an idea of who each person’s ideal buyer persona is and how they can help them. It is surprising how simple a concept and exercise this is and, perhaps, unsurprising how new a concept this is to a lot of small business owners.
As we worked through each person’s attempts my critiques earned me a new nickname – “Simon” – after Simon Cowell of American Idol fame – the British accent must have been a factor in this I suspect (although they did say that I was a lot nicer with my comments than Simon Cowell is!).
It is powerful stuff for those that have struggled along with the old methods of marketing and Tom and I are most grateful to David Meerman Scott for giving us the tools to help our fellow small business. The sheer power of the ‘buyer persona’ stories that were coming out, compared to the old 30 second elevator pitch, was something to behold. What a difference!
Tags: 3000 Club, Buyer Personas, David Meerman Scott, New Marketing, Small Business
March 8th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Wow, this is very cool. I’m glad that you worked on some buyer personas and that my book was a speak for you. David
March 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
So this is another way that new marketing and traditional marketing could be married(?). Maybe you start with your existing clients and get to know their “personas”, then you create new marketing tactics for a variety of these, for example creating Twitter groups that fit a certain profile, and hook them up with ideas, resources and ultimately your services…
March 9th, 2009 at 7:01 am
That would certainly be the next kind of step, John. But you can only progress to offering those kind of solutions when people get the mind set. I don’t know whether it is just Arizona, or the kind of small business networking groups we have been attending, but the vast majority of small business people we come into contact with are very much set in their old traditional marketing ways. Very few are yet aware of what social media is or how powerful it can be. A few understand that they should be participating, but few of them understand what it is.
What we have discovered in our process is that small businesses do not represent our ‘buyer personas’, but that’s another story – our ideal clients don’t go to networking groups. That is why we don’t go to very many now. But there certainly seems to be a need to help small business people understand the differences between the traditional and the new approaches, and that’s quite fun to do.