Nobody cares about your products and services (except you)

Let's be honest, OK?

Nobody cares about your products and services except you and the others in your organization.

What your buyers do care about are themselves. And they care a great deal about solving their problems (and are always on the lookout for a company that can help them do so). The good news for smart marketers is that this knowledge has the potential to make you many times more successful. It may quite literally transform your business (that’s not just my opinion; many people write me to tell me so).

Buy truly understanding the market problems that your products and services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, ego-centric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.

A buyer persona is distinct group potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach. Basing your marketing on buyer personas prevents you from sitting on your butt in your comfortable office just making s#$@ (stuff) up, which is the cause of most ineffective marketing.

Incidentally, my use of the word "buyer" applies to any organization's target customers. A politician’s buyer personas include voters, supporters, and contributors; universities' buyer personas include prospective students (and their parents); a swimming club's buyer personas include potential members; and nonprofit buyer personas include corporate and individual donors. Go ahead and substitute however you refer to your potential customers in the phrase "buyer persona," but do keep your focus on this concept because. It is critical for marketing success.

Instead of creating jargon-filled, hype-based advertising, you can create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to—if you take the time to listen to them discuss the problems that you can solve for them. Then you'll be able to use their words, not your own. You'll speak in the language of your buyer, not the language of your founder, CEO, product manager, or the PR agency staffer. You’ll help your marketing get real.

Comments

[Donna Maria Coles Johnson]

Great post, David. Every word directed to the target audience should show how your product or service will enhance their lives. Whether it's saving them time or money, or offering a product that helps them have a better, more fun or more productive day, the message has to translate, at all levels, into a better life for them.

[Michael Ray Hopkin]

David, You always find a way to say things in a way that hurts just a little (because they're true), yet inspires your readers to do better. I'm a recovering product manager and have been guilty of creating content based on how I wanted my products to appear vs. what the potential customers were looking for. Understanding target personas is absolutely key to successful product/service marketing.

Incidentally, when are you going to commission a "gobbledygook" calculator (similar to the Tuned In calculator of your last post)? It could definitely be a winner! -Michael

[Adele Revella]

Hi David:
It was great to read your Tuned In book and see how much attention you and Craig Stull and Phil Myers give to buyer personas. Pity the poor buyers who want to evaluate different solutions and have nothing more the noise that we see on most web sites and collateral. I've never met a buyer who believed this dribble, but without a tool like buyer personas marketers don't know what else to say. Thanks for continuing to write about my favorite topic, David.

[Vicki]

Can any of you recommend good resources on determining effective personas for a business?

[@ahg3 (Arthur Germain)]

David,
Great post -- I recently posted about the benefits of Customer/Marketing Personas and linked to a great government site (can you believe it?)with step-by-step instructions and examples: http://www.usability.gov/
ahg3
Arthur Germain

[David Meerman Scott]

Vicki, Adele Revella's Buyer Persona blog is an excellent resource. You should read every post she's written. http://www.buyerpersona.com/

[John Rosen]

David: Great, insghtful post, as usual. for the past couple of years, an incresing number of my clients have been using personas and sticking to the imposed discipline has paid real benefis. One mnor quibble with your post: You speak of the payoff from using personas properly as the ability to "create the kind of online content..." I would argue that that the appropriate application of this discipline will allow a marketer to develop the best content for ANY kind of advertising and communication...even "old media."

[Leo Wurschmidt]

With this reformed mindset we have been trying to apply this advice in rewording, and at times reorganizing, our website. We have also been looking at competitor companies. To be honest, it has been amazing to see how many people just talk about themselves. In fact, I would say the majority.

It will be interesting to see just how much this will help us stand out from the crowd or (as Seth Godin says) be remarkable.

[Leo Wurschmidt]

Vicki - Another good resource is David's book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. In there he devotes some time to talking about how to develop buyer personas and buyer persona profiles.

[Morty]

David,

Amen! Too much of what passes for advertising is just brag, boast and bloat.

I do have a problem with the persona concept though. I find it presumptuous to treat guesswork as a real live prospect. It's like setting up a straw man to knock down.

I also wouldn't rely on data gathered from a focus group. I learned way back in the Mail Order days: don't rely on what people SAY they will do. TEST to see what they actually do!

Morty

[Jacqueline Staph]

David: You've touched on one of the most pervasive problems that faces corporate marketing teams: we think that everyone cares about us and our message and our problems and even our solutions as much as we do. "Create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to"... so simple, yet so many well-meaning people miss this point.

Now begins the work that we should have focused on all along: to discover who our customer is, and what they truly want and need.

[Marta Karas]

David,
I am really impressed with your article. The simplicity of your approach towards marketing activities makes this area incredibly interesting even for someone who already has some experience with it!

Both the article and your two latest books (New Rules and Tuned In) are fantastic because for person like me who just starts career in Marketing, they actually give more practical approach. Many thanks for that!

I am just concerned with CEOs and MD being so stubborn with their ideas. Very often they keep doing marketing the way they feel it.
Is there any way to overcome that? Well, with my passion I will try!

Cheers!

[Neil Desai]

Another insightful post. Try telling this to people with the old school marketing mentality.

A lot of people still don't apply this principle. There's so many great tools that are available to apply this.

[Justin Levy]

Hi David:

Yet another great post! I think it is important to craft your messages for your customers. We will regularly send a marketing template to someone to see what they think about it. This person is not connected with our company, isn't involved in PR, marketing or other related fields.

This same thinking applies to managers crafting their messages/directions to their team. You must craft these messages so that your team can understand it which may not be the one you think the message should be delivered.

-Justin Levy

[Bill Gluth]

Excellent post David. Now if only the major Presidential candidates will heed your words and stop talking about nonsense none of us care about and get down to the facts, we'll be in great shape.

I could not agree more. Everything you sell has to be pointed at the buyer and not the product.

[David Meerman Scott]

Bill, It seems to me that the candidates have recently fallen into the trap of focusing on the competition - a fatal marketing mistake. "20 percent fewer calories than our nearest competitor" is an insane way to market.

The reason that the two major presidential candidates are in the race today is because during the primaries they DID NOT focus on their "product" (themselves) nor on the competition but instead paid close attention to buyer personas and what problems needed to be solved. That's how they developed things that people cared about, like the idea of "change".

[Michael D. Wentworth]

David, you've pin-pointed one of the greatest challenges facing marketers: shifting from product-centric to customer-centric thinking. As simple as it sounds, I'm finding that this shift is very difficult for marketers with deep experience in product-centric methods. Keep the good messaging coming!

[Achinta Mitra]

WOW! This couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

I had just finished writing a Press, err…News Release on the launch of our redesigned site when I read your post. Made me stop and rethink. It is so easy to make the mistakes that you’ve mentioned when writing about one’s own company, products or services. I’m now rewriting parts of the release with more focus on my target audience’s needs.

BTW, I’m also reading your book, “The New Rules…& PR.” I’ve already picked up helpful tips like using social media tags (downloaded Todd Defren’s template) and will be adding a Media Room to our site following your advice from Chap. 15.

Thanks for a great post and a book that has become an invaluable learning tool.

[Mikael]

David, this is my first post on your blog and just wanted to let you know that I enjoy the information that you provide. It take me some time to get through it all and I have just downloaded your free ebooks. I better go buy your books as well.

Thanks a million
Mikael

[Lindsay Willott]

David, we also inclue potential staff in our buyer personas when we create them (both for us, and for our clients - we're a marketing agency).

Getting the brightest talent is still a major challenge for most companies, and ensuring you are gearing your content to chime in with potential staff is incredibly useful.

All the best
Lindsay