How do you align your digital content and messaging with your customer segments and personas?

The first factor to consider is that most companies rely on a single data source to determine their customer segments. This can be a significant mistake! While a single data source can provide a great starting point, it is not enough to accurately define customer segments. Rather, a company should use every source of data available to them, such as data from their website, social media, customer reviews, and the like. The second factor to consider is the use of behavioral data as well as demographic data. Customer behavior is a great indicator of what they want, where they want it, and how they want it. The combination of demographic and behavioral data is key to effectively segmenting customers and creating a successful digital strategy.

As companies collect more and more first party data from their customers, they have a fine-tuned ability to connect with them in a personalized way that can drive a deeper connection. It's important to remember that customer segments are helpful directionally, but using broad brush strokes to speak with any group of people can be dangerous.

An e-commerce store selling clothing can segment its customers based on gender, age, and shopping habits. Segments like female customers between 18-24 who frequently shop for trendy clothing can be targeted with personalized promotions and emails showcasing the latest trendy collection at a discounted price. Customer segmentation also helps identify segments that require more attention or improvement, allowing marketers to adjust their efforts accordingly to address their needs and preferences. This improves the overall customer experience and increases the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

Always be mindful of implicit biases when developing your customer personas and thinking through customer segmentation priorities. We as marketers are great at hypothesizing, but every hunch needs to be tested and backed up with data. For example, a kids brand targeting Moms may actually find more favorable results with a Grandparent segment. Before designing an entire campaign strategy or product offering for one segment, consider alternative segments and ideally conduct paid ad testing. Even a $50 paid ad budget can give you thousand of impression points and plenty of valuable results. Analyzing metrics such as CPC and CTR can help point you in the right direction, and even help you discover a surprising new segment.

Data is the key to everything in customer segmentation. With all of the technology we have available for brands and companies to collect data at every stage of the customer journey, it can help to cut through the noise of automation and vanilla messaging that we are seeing across the online space. Personalization and brand loyalty will be key differentiators in the years to come, across key competitors in various industries, sometimes even more important than price. Understanding various customer segments and their micro-moments online will also allow the brand to anticipate needs and expectations across the customer journey.

The common and widely used approach to personas can lead you down a rabbit hole! Instead, there are more important questions to ask beyond the customer’s character and personality – What are they trying to accomplish? Why is that important to them? What exact problem did their purchase solve? What similar product or service of yours did they want to try and why? The answer will lead you to the real “persona” that is actionable and help you generate more revenue. Do they need the product or do they just want to satisfy curiosity? The next step is asking what is the most effective way to help them do what they want to do. Think of it this way "People don't just want to buy a book, they want the knowledge and entertainment it provides."

The most effective personas feel like they are real people. Sometimes, giving each persona a name is helpful in the strategy process as it makes decisioning more tangible.

When you're creating campaigns, personas help you imagine you're talking to a specific person and meeting their individual needs. But one thing to remember is they are only a representation and they're only as good as how well you know your customers and other audiences. Talk to your customers, use personas, but don't overly rely on them beyond serving as a useful thought exercise and reference.

A persona framework is also a great tool for internal collaboration. I have found that orienting a team around persona generation will produce a better marketing campaign because each individual contributor starts with the customer in mind and gains clarity on how to create content with the end user in mind. By understanding the needs and preferences of their ideal customers, marketing teams can create more targeted and engaging content. This, in turn, leads to higher engagement and conversions.

Segmentation and persona are intertwined as they work together to determine whom to target and with what message and what problem to solve. Many digital strategies overlook the importance of getting customer feedback. Customer feedback is crucial in creating a realistic persona and segmentation framework. There are multiple ways to collect feedback, but the most effective way is to get feedback from customers who have recently bought from you. Furthermore, many strategies make the process overly complicated. The more complicated it is, the less likely it is to succeed. It should be able to respond to questions about what it will solve and how it will be used. If you can't explain it in a single sentence, your framework is too complex.

Another way to frame attitudinal and behavioral segments for personas is by thinking styles: how and why some people might prefer certain decision-making patterns and ways to navigate over others. These can cut across other segments and can be helpful in making personas more actionable not only for marketing teams but also for UX and product teams.

Personas should never be static definitions. People (and the cultures that they are a part of) evolve. From a customer's sense of self, to values, challenges and needs - these changes can be small or significant and impacted by world events, through to disruptive innovation. Technology like #AI can help to build and track personas, as well as the factors that may cause them to evolve. The perceived personas of direct and indirect competitors can also be built and tracked with public information, such as content shared on social media. Persona-based data can inspire new products, services, collaborations, tactics... maybe even a virtual being 'spokesperson' or character for branded content.

Customer interviews are a great place to start - if you can isolate the most satisfied and least satisfied customers this is a great way to begin the journey of improving product and messaging. However layering in on-site surveys and online reviews can also be beneficial. Aim to create 3-5 personas that represent their target audience. From there you have to use a combination of data points and intuition to develop personas and bring them to life by brainstorming what the persona may be feeling, thinking, and doing leading up to discovering your business or brand.

Start with all the pain points you're hearing from your customer segments, and create content that helps them solve their challenges. Layer on additional useful content that maps to the buyers' journey and extends out from those challenges to your solution to them.

When it comes to aligning your digital content and messaging with customer segments, many miss a key factor – understanding that each customer segment or persona is unique and deserves its own tailored message. Leveraging technology is the key to aligning your digital content and messaging with customer segments and personas. Utilize marketing automation, AI-powered chatbots, and personalization tools for a streamlined approach that will ensure your messages are synchronized throughout all communication channels. This will ensure that your content is unique, engaging, and captivating!

This doesn’t just apply to digital. It starts with broad compelling content. Too often brands start with micro targeting. I am not a fan of massively specific personas. Psychographics are the perfect depth to get deep but not deep enough to knock out potential customers. Once you know interests and beliefs you can marry up tangible and higher order benefits. If you want a fun vintage CNBC interview on this topic, Google my name and CNBC. An ancient interview from the early aughts should pop. Hairstyles are out of touch but the interview is still relevant!

Personas are critical in driving the most efficient Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). They help advertisers understand which strategies are most effective so they can optimize budgets towards these approaches and remove/revise the strategy moving forward.

Try to think of your target audience as a group of hungry little kids. You can't just serve them all the same dish and expect them all to love it and eat it. With your audience, do your research, find out what they like and don’t like. Then create a customized “menu” that will leave them wanting seconds. Use words and phrases that speak to their “appetites” - but be sure to perfect your “recipes” until everyone leaves full.

Personalized content and messaging can truly help a business stand out from competitors and differentiate the brand in a crowded market. For B2C brands, knowing exactly who you’re targeting and developing specialised, contextual, and nuanced messaging for each segment of the target audience is the best way to maximise brand value and build stronger connections with customers.

Creating digital content and messaging that is specifically tailored to your customer segments and personas can provide numerous benefits, the most important of which are improved customer retention and increased brand differentiation, both of which are critical for establishing yourself as a market outlier. This connection with your customers fosters loyalty, which reduces churn, generates repeatable, sustainable, and scalable revenue, and positions your brand as a desirable choice in the minds of your target audience.

In my experience, marketers and sellers too often form personas heavily on titles and "-graphics", treating the individuals who are actually their best prospects like a segment. Personalization is ideal, but you can achieve the "feeling" of personalization by not only accurately forming your segments and persona frameworks, but also delivering storytelling that makes the individual feel like they're the only one in the room.

You can speak to your audience's needs and show them you understand them, bring thought leadership to life that resonates with them, and show them why you have the best solution for their needs.

The impact of aligning content with customer segments varies based on the breadth of your customer base. Striking a balance can result in greater engagement and authenticity, but it may also limit brand and content reach with a broad audience.