Not just a cardboard cutout: putting personas to work
I spoke to a CEO recently who was frustrated about the lack of impact made by her company’s two-year old persona program. Six-foot tall cardboard cut-outs of each buyer persona were distributed around the building in kitchens and meeting rooms as a way to remind everyone to keep the customer’s needs top-of-mind. “We presented the concept, trained the team, had them create personas and roll them out,” she said. “Now no one seems to know what to do next. How do we take this to the next level?”
Personas on the Ground
In order for your investment in personas to pay off, they have to be more than a PDF sitting in the cloud or a cardboard cutout standing in the cafeteria. They’ve got to be part of the way every customer-facing team operates. And while content is the most obvious area of impact, a cross-functional persona program impacts just about everyone. The mindset shifts from something Marketing is doing on its own to something every leader must embrace and integrate across functions. For example:
Product Managers broaden their product portfolios based on the needs and challenges faced by target personas. Working with Business Analysts, they create use cases to inform prioritization of features for upcoming development sprints.
Product Marketers, Content Strategists and Editors build content plans based on the needs of persona at different stages of the Buyer Journey.
Event Managers choose sponsorship and exhibit opportunities at conferences where the persona is likely to attend, and host meetups featuring panel discussions of interest to the persona.
Customer Success teams develop on-boarding programs and tools that reflect what they’ve learned about how to quickly engage and demonstrate product value to the persona.
Sales people tailor their email and social media outreach based on what is known about the Persona’s role in the buying decision.
Operationalize Your Personas
For the program to really stick, it must be both cross-functional and executive-driven. Knowing the customer is everyone’s business, because not knowing them leads to everyone’s downfall. There are lots of ways to get beyond the who to the how and operationalize your personas.
Establish a small cross-functional small team (no committees, please, we’re trying to get sh*t done) comprised of marketing/content, product and customer success or sales to own the Persona going forward. This means agreeing to meet quarterly for an hour to review the persona’s attributes and discuss emerging issues, trends or changes.
Start operationalizing with those with the most at stake -- product and marketing/content. If roles and responsibilities between the teams are clear, task managers and directors with updating upcoming plans to reflect new persona record data, and validate in small groups. If roles and responsibilities for content are less black-and-white, consider something like the Pragmatic Marketing Framework to facilitate the discussion.
Task other customer-facing teams to explore how the availability of a new persona record might change the way they work. If the impact is potentially daunting, try carving off a few initiatives like your email newsletter or tagging content in your customer success site and tracking its use.
Don’t declare victory too early. Depending on the length of your sales cycle, the results of your persona program may not be felt broadly within the company for some time. Be honest about your expectations for better content and better campaign results, but bring in the broader Sales team and other non-customer-facing teams in on the program once you have meaningful results to share with them.
Publish persona content and lessons learned in a forum where those interested are likely to stumble on it. Your Slack channel, Microsoft Teams or other messaging app will do, as are updates on the intranet. Some marketing automation and sales CRM systems integrate persona tracking within their feature set, and add-ons and apps abound.
Personas are powerful ways to unite everyone around the buyer’s needs, mindset and point of view. Be sure to go beyond defining them to operationalize them across the board.
