Streamline lead segmentation for corporations

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hello hello hello and welcome yet again to this second series of marketing theories explained in the first series we looked more at the tactical elements whereas in this series we're looking at strategical elements of marketing the models and theories that are going to essentially make you a better marketer we'll look at how to apply them what they mean give you some examples some of them might be hypothetical but hopefully you'll resonate with some of the things that that we uh that we talk about now we are live on linkedin on youtube on facebook and microsoft teams so if you've got any questions um for me about well anything to do with marketing to be fair because that's what i kind of do for a living but if you've got any questions please feel free to drop them in on linkedin on youtube on facebook or on microsoft teams and i'll get around to answering them at the end okay so that's enough waffle from me let's do brief intros and then hopefully we'll have a few people join us and then we can crack on and talk about all things strategic marketing so first and foremost thank you for professional academy for allowing me to do this and taking their stage their limelight for uh 20 minutes half an hour and thank you so much for joining me as well hopefully i can add some value to this uh professional academy or strategic partner of the cim the chartered institute of marketing and a globally recognized provider of marketing training and qualifications but also apprenticeships and i'm proud to be associated with them and have been for a long time which i'll touch upon now my name is peter sumson i'm a lego master of marketing i like to turn those little marketing bricks that are dotted around on the floor that are frustrating and you don't know how they all connect or where they all go within the grand scheme of your business create something fun understandable unique exciting but also that works for your business that will return an roi i've been tutoring for professional academy for around about 10 years now le decima and i'm currently assisting with the apprenticeships and the cim qualifications that professional academy offer proud to do so i also offer consultancy work as well um and my main aim is in life is to highlight to as many businesses as possible the value and the benefit of having a marketing orientated and focused approach and company so a little intro to the series what are we trying to do within this um marketing strategy theory explained series of which this is the fourth one out of six you run out of time to see my wonderful face on a thursday well we're starting with analysis and auditing which we looked at in in the previous three sessions and we're going right through to control and measurement but these next two episodes this one and number five are really focused on that strategy building that strategic direction and having that strategic fit not just with your company but with your audience as well like i said if you've got any questions drop them in the comments and i'll answer them at the end of this session so what are we going to look at today we're going to be look at looking at stp and customer persona what it is and why it's important so set an acronym there really acronyms they're everywhere in marketing but let me highlight what that acronym is first of all and then let's get on to discussing um how we actually implement that marketing sorry how we actually actually implement what we're talking about there sorry i was doing admin live on air shouldn't do that so stp it stands for segmentation targeting and positioning as you can see on the screen what this allows us to do is create clarity on who our target market is and what competitive position we need to succeed within a particular subset of our overall market a lot of marketing fluffy words there and don't worry we'll uncover it all what we'll also look at today is a customer persona and what customer persona is is a detailed representation of a specific element within a target market or within an actual market it gives you clarity on identifying who your ideal client truly is and we can get massively detailed down to the different colored chocolate that they like to eat more on that later so what are we looking to do here number one we're looking to segment the market number two we're looking to target the best segment that we've realized our best customers number three working to develop a persona for these customers to know and understand them to make them real to have them setting our meeting room when we're discussing how we can best serve them and finally we're going to position our offering for a competitive advantage right let's start off by taking a deep dive into stp segmentation targeting and positioning first thing to think about with segmentation is that you're never going to please everyone and neither do you want to to be fair uh if you want to know how important that is look up a guy called kevin kelly so he talks about 1000 true fans and seth godin always mentions this and this is how you should view your segmentation not in subsets of a thousand but more importantly focusing on that smallest viable audience that you can serve that have similar attributes a segment of your market if you like but how do we do this segmentation what we want to do is divide our customers or the entire market into groups of people potential customers prospects into groups of people with common characteristics needs wants desires these characteristics can be demographic geographic behavioral psychographic any element that will divide a bigger subset into different segments you can utilize at this point let's look at an example of segmentation so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to use a distribution company a uk-wide distribution company if they were looking to segment their market they might do it on geographical location make sense because they're distributing they might do it on status age of individuals average spend of individuals now you might be thinking that's great but i work in the b2b sector and that's absolutely fine we can segment within the b2b sector as well so in instead of age we might look at size of business we might look at turnover we might look at the different types of products if we're doing that b to b and we're distributing to b to b customers geographical location absolutely 100 so just to summarize with segmentation think of it like this analogy coming up by the way so think of it as if you have a big bag of m ms and that is your market in general that is your whole market and you're going to divide them by color green red blue brown yellow think that's it let me know if i've missed out any m's and apologies all m ms are made equal think of it like that you're dividing your bag of m ms by color you could even divide it by size after that if you want to get really detailed but that is a segment of your marketplace okay let's move on to targeting so we've segmented we've got a bag of m ms we've made segmented it by color or we've done this from a distribution network into geographical location and size of spend that type of stuff what do we do now we move on to targeting it's decision time you've got all these segments you could target them all depending on the size of your organization the number of people you have working on the marketing department but it's more likely that you want to focus on which segment is most attractive which has the best strategic fit if you like again think about your bag of m ms green might be better than blue although as we all know red is the clear and obvious color of choice always it's a football reference for anybody that doesn't know me or hasn't joined him before but in our targeting what we need to do um is we need to focus on a singular segment of the market so this could include profitability it could include size that's how we're going to target potential growth it could be that we look at it from a a negative point of view and we go okay what are the potential barriers here what are the barriers that stop us targeting a certain segment it could be legal it could be geographical and then you put them to a side and you focus on the other segments so segments and targeting are kind of intertwined if you like that they're interlocked between each other you wouldn't really segment without doing the targeting and you can't do the targeting without the segmentation so if we continue to use this distribution example what we found is that geographically our best average spend per customer is twice as far away as the next best paying set of customers so we could do a quick calculation a quick analysis and i'm not going to do that here but we could do a quick calculation quick analysis and it'll tell you which segment the furthest one away or the one that's closer should be the main target through lifetime customer value and return on investment now once we've done that and once we know who we're going to target then we can look to develop a customer persona get into detail about this target market not just what they got in common but what they like to do what their preferences are we're going to go real detail but that's for a little bit later on i want to finish the segmentation targeting positioning acronym model stp before we move on to that so the final part positioning now this is important because we've segmented and we've targeted now we move on to positioning which is a bit of a step change if you like so how do we do this we've understood our target our target market and we can consider external factors now we bring these in and where we fit within our own marketplace now the way we do that is um we can utilize something we call a positioning map and we'll come on to that in a moment you may remember those from a few episodes ago what we want to do is use this type of map to highlight any gaps in the market and develop a position that creates a competitive advantage for our business or us as an individual it should never be a one-size-fits-all sit in the middle type of approach if unless your target market want that from the type of company that you are so let's take a quick look at one of these positioning maps and this is the final time i'll use distribution as an example but it's kind of worked so far so let's let's carry on shall we so like i said the positioning map as you can see on the screen goes way back to session one when we were looking at the marketing audit so check out session one on professional academy's youtube channel if you haven't already we were looking at the marketing audit and we actually discussed positioning maps and and where they fit in but what we're doing here is showing where our competitors fit on two various axes in this instance it's delivery time and maximum weight the longer to the the right it goes or the further to the right or the top it goes uh the longer the delivery time or the heavier the items you're willing to carry so as you can see on the screen apologies if you're listening to podcast but as you can see on the screen we have got competitors that have um carry weighted products that have various delivery times short and long but in the top left no competitor has same day delivery or a very quick delivery while carrying the maximum weight possible so what will this give you well we can place ourselves in this quadrant in this section and as the distribution company that is our competitive advantage same-day delivery heavy objects delivered on the same day and that is how we'd utilize our positioning map so now look what we've done what we've done so far we've segmented our marketplace we know who we're targeting and now we've got a competitive position something that we know solves our target markets problem what we want to do now is get to know our target market that little bit better get a little bit cozy have a brew with them maybe invite them into our home maybe not that far invite them into our office well even if we can do that nowadays anyway i'm getting bogged down in politics and logistics let's not do that let's focus this final section on persona so we know the segment that provides the best strategic fit and we even know where we're going to position ourselves in the market but how do you know what type of comms is going to resonate with our audience we know we're a good strategic fit we know that's the best target audience for us but how do we get our audience to go yep you're the company for me even in a b to b space personas have their part to play because remember humans buy from humans so this is important to create a persona in the b to b space as it is b to c but i suppose the question we need to answer now is how do you build a persona well there's one of two ways or one of two ways i'd like to highlight there's actually three because you could do a blend of these two ways but one of them is using robust research to detail what your target market is made up of the facts the figures the numbers the undeniable data that we have at our disposal the second one is looking at a persona which is more akin to an ideal client if someone has to walk through the door who would you want to walk through that door and say you're the company for me you're the company i want to work for here's all my cash happy to work with you now you might be saying everyone or anyone but that's rubbish fully defend that being a rubbishness because it isn't anyone so somebody could hand over a lot of cash for you to solve their problems but if they're heavily in debt what if that cash doesn't stack up what if that's the only time they spend the money with you wouldn't it be better creating a relationship with somebody you could trust going forward for longer lifetime customer value those types of elements we need to consider is it worth our while right okay so for the final time we'll look at two different types of persona building through fact and through fiction so the first one's through fact so how do we do this where do we get our information from well how about we talk to our customers that would be a good start wouldn't it let's have a little chat to our customers this can be done through surveys interviews but also think of what's at our disposal disposal readily available the internal resources check out analytical programs google analytics a crm system previous sales monetary values what they've purchased beforehand then once we've done that we can look at external resources we've looked at other platforms where data's gathered such as social platforms even exhibitions that we might have sponsored what do their delegate list look like what information can we gdpr compliant of course can we gather through those types of lists and using this data can help us build a persona that's built on fact if we do this we should be able to answer those those key core undeniably data driven information elements demographics the age or company market share geographical location digital habits purchase history now the only issue we've got here is that anything other than anything that's data driven and we could have some degree of qualitative research in there but it would be anecdotal for us to do that and that's okay because that is a blended version so we've got the data we add hypothetical or anecdotal or what we feel is right to that mix and that's absolutely fine that'll give you a blended uh persona but that doesn't dive deep enough so the second part of this the second part that we're going to look at is a persona through fiction and that seems a bit weird why would i develop a persona through fiction what's the point in that well we try to bring our persona to life who our ideal client would be who do we specifically want to walk through our door so we can do that through numbers and figures but that's more in hindsight that's previously who we've worked with and that's fantastic brilliant but what about going forward what if we're going to change direction where are we going to get that data from well we can build a persona through fiction it's an image of who's going to walk through that door so how do we do this well we need to consider asking ourselves who this person might be and we go detailed here whereas building on on on fact we may not get down to these specifics with fiction we can elaborate and be creative so here's a list of questions that you want to be asking yourself when it comes to a fictional ideal client what are their pain points who are they their marital status their age their sex the location what solutions do they look for what do they do at the weekends what hobbies do they have what their what's their job what they earn what car do they drive what films tv programs books entertainment do they enjoy what's their favorite color eminem those things will help build up a persona and once we do that we have this wonderful picture in our mind's eye or on screen of what that person looks like but why do we do this and who does it actually help doing this well if we can start to build a picture of who our ideal client our customer persona regardless if it's built on fact or fiction is then we can start to communicate or build communications that resonate with those people with those individuals so it might sound silly saying their favorite color eminem but if their favorite color eminem is red and it clearly will be it always is their favorite color eminem is red we could probably create comms around or utilizing the color red that sounds stupid but it resonates so think about your favorite brand they will resonate with you so let's take m ms for the final time let's take m ms and i'm pretty sure if people aren't wanting m ms right now you're a bit crazy but pick out the red ones and just eat those if you think about what they stand for or what their brand resonates they're fun they don't take themselves too seriously they're colorful they have a laugh well this is the same with their target market it resonates in their comms and it resonates with their target market young and old as well if you've seen the tv if you've seen the advert on tv where the m m's are in bed with with somebody's girlfriend or wife or whatever it might be that isn't really for somebody younger although m ms is aimed at somebody younger so clearly they're trying to resonate with an older audience so building up that persona you can really start to understand where you can resonate with your audience so let's just summarize segmentation targeting positioning helps you develop a competitive position you utilize it with the intention of targeting a specific group more effect efficiently and effectively and this three-step approach along with creating a customer persona helps the whole business gain clarity around the most profitable areas within their market if you don't know the answer to things like who's your target market what's your competitive advantage you're going to become redundant and you're going to lose sight of the bigger picture here so focus on those and who you're trying to serve categorize your market into subsets each with similar features review these and focus on the target or individual groups that are going to be more profitable or make sense have a strategic fit develop a persona and gain clarity on who your target market is and then look at your market and consider where that sweet spot would be between your target markets needs and wants what you do best as an organization as a company as a brand and any gaps that might be in the market and then you can decide whether to defend or attack think about playing guess who wouldn't it be a lot easier if we knew who was on the card in the first place that way it'd take all the guesswork out of it but i suppose that wouldn't be much fun in a way so you can do that but the game wouldn't really last very long bad analogy i suppose but i'm going to finish on that analogy so to close first of all thank you so so much for watching next week we're going to be looking at ansoff's matrix so we're going mega mega strategic it's developed in the 1960s i think correct me if i'm wrong developed in the 1960s and it still holds a presence today so a bit more about this series it can be found on professional academy's youtube channel if you've enjoyed today check it out there's nine others wow nine blimey or check out the blog post to accompany the series and all the links can be found on their website so finally from myself and professional marketing happy marketing and it's question time okay right let me check any questions out that we might have again apologies if i don't get round to it or apologies if i don't see your questions okay so we've got a few here so uh adam adam says if i have no customer data where can i start that is absolutely brilliant so we covered a few points in uh way way back when i was dribbling on about um segmentation and persona well a great place to start is anything internally that you can get your hands on so look at financial records like even if it's just as basic as on a customer level how much the spent simple as that work out average order value first and foremost utilize free tools that the likes of facebook have remember facebook probably have more information about us as individuals as governments do so it makes sense to go to them to look at developing a target audience or what they like and facebook's good for doing that the back end of it's really good really interesting for doing that but also look at other areas so if you've got a crm for example internally look at um trade associations or exhibitions like i mentioned exhibitions trade associations really good they will have a list of their members and probably a lot of detail on their members and they probably publish papers about what's going on in the market so there's loads of information we can gather anything where we can build a persona from or through factor fiction it doesn't matter anything that we can gather information to better target those people we're trying to serve absolutely okay cool hopefully having that um that answered the question right there's one from sylvia which is better factual or fictional personas either i prefer a blend so if you think about what we're doing there we are saying from a factual point of view these are the people that we can serve and we're probably serving already or get a good indication about who knows likes and trusts us straight away through the likes of google analytics and internal data but doing the fictional part well it's a bit of fun really um but it allows us to get creative and that creativity in marketing is hugely important and even um when mark ritson did his um i can't remember what the talk was called but when mark britson did his talk he he spoke about how important creativity is but not without all the theory behind it so creativity is hugely important so i do a mixture of both there's no right or wrong answer there sylvia i'm afraid um so just try try them if you haven't got the data look at who you want to walk through the door and then do some research about that type of person so for example if you found out or you thought that your target market liked blue m ms boo then have a look online to see what type of people eat blue eminem's you know there's lots of data out there so use it effectively okay so steve says how important is tone when communicating with your persona well this comes back to understanding the target market so if if we look at um a emotional or an irrational purchase like that could be huge to understand how our target market our segment see what we do as a business the products are the service that we sell so if there are more emotional ties then the tone has to resonate with that emotion if it's more of a um fast-moving consumer good milk is always my example then how do you put some emotion on milk i suppose you can if you've got an affinity to cows or or milk or anything like that but at the end of the day it's going to be more of a rational purchase so our tone when it comes to getting that across should be more rational having said that just because it's a rational purchase doesn't mean we can't have um add a bit of fun into our creative if you think about milk again and cravendale it could still even be their their strap line something along the lines of it's so good even the cows want it back and they had adverts where cows were trying to get going in supermarkets trying to get cravendale off the shelf and take it back so just because it's a rational purchase doesn't mean we can't add that sense of humor but it's knowing and understanding when we can add that appeal into our comms and understanding what our target market wants to see that's that allows us to do that and we only do that through our research notice how everything comes back to research well it's true as marketers standing on the soapbox here but as marketers we are stuck in this we need to do something now we need to create communication we need to be seen on all platforms we don't we need to get the research right first so please please please do that first okay um katie says great m ms um and guess who analogies thank you nice one katie thank you so so much for joining us but she's got a question as well so hopefully this doesn't uh trip me up and this is the last question i volunteer for a non-profit that looks at the environment nice one good stuff we require donations does it make sense to do personas how that's another question how so does it does it make sense to do personas if so how as this is this is a different industry a non-profit this is a different industry so it's non-profit it's the industry absolutely 100 so if if if you're for-profit not-for-profit regardless of your organization or or who you are you should be building a persona why is that important for for not profit well if you if you know and again this goes back to tone i suppose and and emotional appeal so if you know what type of people are more likely to donate to an environmental charity and build a picture of what they do at weekends um what they like watching uh what that what their where they live those types of things then you can target them more specifically more detailed and and try to um you're not trying to convince them to make a donation you're just trying to resonate with them enough that they think you are donationable is that a word so what you want to know and understand is why why do they donate suppose that's the key thing in your um in your persona why do they donate why is your environmental nonprofit important to them why do they care about the environment so for example and i know you haven't gone into much detail but are they are they more concerned about water are they more concerned about trees are they more concerned about pollution are they more concerned about um cars you know it depends and link that to what you're doing creatively and link that and look at the research behind it and look at the type of people that are reading that research or understand want to know that research ask i mean you must have donors already so ask them why did you donate what do you think's a reasonable donation because you don't want to be going to your persona and thinking they've got mega money to spend and 50 pound a month is a reasonable donation where 50 pound a month is is you know living for some people so those are the types of things you need to be looking at average donation you know uh age range you must have some kind of database and if you don't start building one from donations ask small questions and build from there okay so if that doesn't answer your question katie or you want a bit more context to that you know please reach out to professional academy or myself uh check me out on linkedin um no problem and we can go to a bit more detail so i think that's it i thought this was going to be a short one and i think it's been the longest one we've done so thank you very much for staying with me uh finally um again from me and professional academy enjoy the rest of your day and happy marketing you