The lazy marketer would take this case study and strongly recommend going for a very low price point and make up profit with a large sales volume through big box distribution channels. But remember the web removes price as a competitive advantage. There will always be a substitute or cheaper brand willing to prostitute themselves out and they are just a Google search away for our customer. As the picture shows, there are 48 stores willing to sell an iPhone 4s.

However, this approach may indeed work. For awhile that is. Eventually, the web will catch up and our product will be knocked off by another manufacturer or offered online at a cheaper price. This we can be guaranteed if we have any success in the market. Now, it becomes a nuclear arms race to the bottom price point. Brand and all the emotional benefits around it are thrown to the wind in the race to maintain sales volume and undercut competitors.

With large sales volumes comes tremendous marketing challenges. How do you control and provide value in the customer experience? You don’t anymore because it quickly becomes about marketing just meeting sales objectives. The price has to be kept low to compete, which means little resources for making interacting with the brand a remarkable experience. The stressed digital marketer stares on as nasty comments rack up on the company blog. Google Reviews and Yelp explode with one star reviews. Customer reviews pile up with vicious feedback on Amazon. Niche bloggers in the space quickly pounce.

And those Big Box distribution channels? Well, they also have user reviews as well and since the quality and experience is so low, it is reflected with poor 3rd party feedback. Sales stall in these distribution channels. About this time, a competitor enters the market with a lower price point and a fresh slate in the minds of customers (though they will end in the same position shortly as well).

Finally, the almighty Google indexes all this venomous content. So, those great keywords that we used to rank for, in addition to our brand name are now polluted with the crowds’ angry experiences. The first page results quickly show how poor our product and brand is. There is nowhere to hide now. We would be better off scraping the brand and starting it over.

While starting initially strong with tremendous sales volume, the company sputters to a stop.

The old model where the consumer had no voice and the crowd could not assemble for or against a brand ensured that consumers were largely in the dark. There was no quick and easy way to see if a product or company was great. We had blind trust and often times were disappointed. But as we saw with global companies like Dell and United Airlines, the consumer is in control today.

They are one viral video away from forcing a company to rework its entire customer service experience.

Key takeaway: The feedback loop for brands today is real-time. There is no delay in people talking about their experience and doing it in creative or destructive ways.

We’ll dive into the nitty gritty details about how to form a solid search strategy in a second.For now, though we can focus our search engine brainstorms on different keyword phrases that relate to the tasks Chris trying to accomplish (again, more on how to do this in a bit).

For now, let’s riff on what phrases Chris might possibly search on…

• “Productivity tools”?
• “Moleskine journaling tips”?
• “Ways to be more organized in meetings?”
• “How to read and journal”?
• “Writing to remember”?
• “Habits of successful financial advisors”?
• “How to be organized when starting your own company”?

Why this exercise works
All these phrases can be worked into content creation on our website based on the engagement we will see from our research on these terms. We might also run a paid search search campaign and track the effectiveness of click-thru rates (CTR) using these terms to discover which ones convert over to sales. Using a web metrics tool like Google Analytics, we will know where users come from, where they go, where they fall out in the sales funnel, and if they complete a check-out and purchase a product.

But aside from having a good grasp at going after the technical tactics, there is another added benefit of a solid user persona.

As we’ve seen over and over, attention is the true currency online. We have to build our brand experience around providing a good return on this investment for Chris.

Knowing what Chris wants in life (to start his own investment firm), we can build content on our website and publish through social media channels.

For example:

• Our blog can focus on all sorts of tips and tricks for helping our dear customer move up in their career.
• We might cover the benefits of active journaling for providing insights into your professional and personal goals.
• We might play up the importance of always being prepared for when inspiration strikes.
• Or just making sure you make it to the coffee shop with pen, paper, and money for a cup of joe.
• We can also build content that features interviews with creative and successful people in the professional world and explore their habits for self-reflection and professional development.

All this content will resonate with Chris because we now know what he is trying to accomplish in life and what matters to him. The persona provides a glimpse into his aspirations and emotions – not ours.

We will measure our success with tools like site analytics, comments on our website, and our social media stream to test and confirm whether this resonates. We will be creating, listening, measuring, and tweaking our content in real-time based on these results.

Key takeaway: A user persona is ever evolving. If you have the luxury of knowing existing customers this becomes easier and you are much closer to the bull’s eye as a result. If your marketing department doesn’t have these insights, you now have a good example to follow to build out one. Be sure to go back and adjust assumptions as you study your customer and gather more data. Treat it like an ongoing research project and you will get big “a-ha” moments and build a stronger brand as a result.

In the next section, we’ll fully dive into the strategy phase of successful digital marketing campaigns. By going through a solid competitive audit research exercise, the user persona will start to present itself. For now, though we can start to see how a well rounded user persona gives us a tremendous launching board for making sure our experience will resonate.

Let’s take a quick peek at how the user persona can be used in the real-world.

From interviewing four or five ideal users that are Moleskine fans, we’ll know that Chris likes quality and has the income to spend on it. Our price point will be aggressive – roughly 2X what a Moleskine will cost or in the neighborhood of $50 at retail.

So, we would want to stress that our journal add-on is made of the finest quality leather with particular detailed paid to the manufacturing methods and the design is slick and minimal. Using insights from our user interviews and empathizing with their needs, we’ll work with our designers to build in every needed feature to show that each product feature has been thought through for making the urban professional productive on the go. As marketers, we are helping to shape the experience from the get go by providing user insights. Which makes our job drastically easier by ensuring we have a good product/market fit. The more insights the better (although you are not always blessed with a seat at the table this early).

From our well-conducted interviews, the design specs might include things like:

• a key hook
• fleece pocket for a smartphone
• sleeves to hold pens and an iPad stylus
• wallet or credit cards slots
• maybe even a space to hold sticky note tabs for marking important parts in the journal itself.

From our user persona, we also know that Chris is a power user on researching customer reviews, so we would want to make sure we have a solid online PR push behind us. Hopefully, we’ll even be able to land a few product reviews at some of his favorite websites with a link back to our website. This not only drives traffic to our website and brand awareness but gives us third-party credibility, which is huge for earning trust with a new brand.

We’ll also pay particular attention to any of our brand mentions online using Google Alerts and Twitter, as well as that of our competitors. When appropriate, we’ll hop in on the conversation with helpful tips and honest dialogue as quickly as we can.

Don’t worry if this all sounds a little overwhelming by the way. In the coming sections, we’ll go over how to set all this up and execute these tactics in detail.

Key takeaway – a user persona helps us remove our personal biases and world views and instead think of what our ideal user would want. Too many marketers make the mistake of inserting themselves in that decision flow. Remember, it’s about the customer, not you.

Let’s start by thinking how a potential user like Chris would find out about our product.

In the next section, we’ll fully dive into the strategy phase of successful digital marketing campaigns. By going through a solid competitive audit research exercise, the user persona will start to present itself. Let’s see how a well rounded user persona gives us a tremendous launching board for making sure our experience will resonate. Back to our Moleskine add-on product that we hope will be of interest to Chris.

We know Chris likes quality and has the income to spend on it. Our price point will be aggressive – roughly double what a Moleskine will cost or in the neighborhood of $50 at retail.So, we would want to stress that our journal add-on is made of the finest quality leather with particular detailed paid to the manufacturing methods and the design is slick and minimal. From user testing, we’ll show how every detail has been thought through for making the urban professional productive on the go. Design specs might include things like a key hook, fleece pocket for a smartphone, sleeves to hold pens and an iPad stylus, wallet or credit cards slots, and maybe even a space to hold sticky note tabs for marking important parts in the journal itself.We also know that Chris is a power user on researching customer reviews, so we would want to make sure we have a solid online public relations push behind us. Hopefully, we’ll even be able to land a few product reviews at some of his favorite websites with a link back to our website. This not only drives traffic and brand awareness but gives us credibility, which is huge for earning trust with a new brand.

We’ll also pay particular attention to any of our brand mentions online using Google Alerts and Twitter Advanced Search, as well as our competitors. We hop in on the conversation with helpful tips and honest dialogue as quickly as we can.

Finally, our search engine strategy will focus on specific keywords that relate to the tasks he’s trying to accomplish. Phrases like “productivity tools” or “Moleskine journaling tips” can be worked into content creation on our website based on the engagement we have seen from our research on these terms. We might also run a paid search search campaign and track the effectiveness of click-thrus using these terms to discover which ones convert over to sales. Using Google Analytics, we will know where users come from, where they go, where they fall out in the sales funnel, and if they complete a check-out and purchase a product.

But aside from having a good grasp at going after the technical tactics, there is another added benefit of a solid user persona. As we’ve seen, attention is the currency online. We have to build our brand experience around providing a good return on this investment for Chris.

Knowing what Chris wants in life (to start his own investment firm), our blog can focus on all sorts of tips and tricks for helping our dear customer move up in their career. We might cover the benefits of active journaling for providing insights into your professional and personal goals. We might play up the importance of always being prepared for when inspiration strikes. Or just making sure you make it to the coffee shop with pen, paper, and money for a cup of joe. We can also build content that features interviews with creative and successful people in the professional world and explore their habits for self-reflection and professional development.

All this content will resonate with Chris because we now know what he is trying to accomplish in life and what matters to him. The persona provides a glimpse into his aspirations and emotions. The site analytics, comments, and social media stream will confirm whether this resonates.

We will be creating, listening, measuring, and tweaking our content in real-time based on these results. Next, we’ll dig into how to do this detailed analysis.

At this point, marketers tend to feel a little overwhelmed in the data. There is usually a good mix of big picture data and fuzzy comments from blogs and social media. A great way to get a handle is to find a blank whiteboard and bring a stack of multi-colored post-it notes.

1. Pick a color for quantitative data (the numbers). This should be the database research numbers on growth, sales figures, potential market segment they own, rate of defects, price points, satisfaction scores like star reviews, number of pages on the first page of Google, Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Flickr/YouTube followers – basically any hard numbers that can be validated by 3rd party sources and can’t be spun by a PR firm.
2. Pick a different color for qualitative data (the emotional responses). Here is where you write down all the interesting tidbits – customer comments, social media mentions, press hits, blog comments. Just pick the best pieces for each competitor for now. You can easily be very overwhelmed here. Remember, you are looking for big gaps in the emotional experience of that brand as evidenced by customers feedback on these channels.
3. Head to the whiteboard and list all your competitors in order of market leaders (consider ranking by sales revenue or market share – real or perceived) on the left hand side of the board and make rows, much like a spreadsheet. Drop in the post-it notes from your research next to each competitor under the column headings “Data” and “Feedback”. Finally, leave a space on the far right for additional questions that can be written in a separate color with a giant question mark at the top of that column. These are things that you would like to know more about or feel unsure about. It feels good to write it down and file it away for now, which we need to do to get our creative juices flowing.
4. Take at least a 30 minute break. Next, step back from the board at least ten feet and pull up a chair with a stack of post-it notes in hand. Where are the holes? The colors will show you immediately if you are weak on quantitative or qualitative data for a particular company.
5. The questions in the far column tells you where you need to go next. Fill in the holes and go through steps 1 – 4, until you feel you are confident in answering the nagging questions in your head.

Key takeaway: This quick research shows us what success brands in our space are having in their customer experience online and also where they might be stumbling. We can then make sure we don’t make the same mistakes in our efforts. Inevitably this exercise leads to some big “ah-ha” moments on ways to add value to the digital experience – and we can back it up with real data (qualitative and quantitative) for getting internal buy-in.

How to research our users

It can be extremely helpful to get out from behind our desks and talk to people we feel would find enjoyment in possibly using our product.

A short conversation with even four or five ideal potential users can reveal much about what our product or service should do and why they might purchase. From these informal interviews we can start to construct the user persona or instead we might find that we do not have a good product/market fit.

Obviously, it is much better to discover this now and reshift how we’re designing our marketing strategy before plunging ahead on very little true understanding of our customers’ needs and desires.

Steps for doing basic competitive market research in the digital age:

Note: The tactics and methods to do in-depth secondary market research are well beyond the scope of this text but there are a variety of great books and resources online. Below is a general method for helping build out a user persona.

1. The first step is to evaluate the product or services’ functional benefits and then ask ourselves “what else is out there”? Google around for various search terms and make a list of who comes up on the first page. The famous SWOT analysis method can be helpful for evaluating internal and external market opportunities.
2. Next, we can do a competitive audit for the industry and identify the market leaders. Knowing these players, we can use our local university or public library databases and Google to research things like yearly revenue, sales growth, and possible distribution channels. If the company is publicly traded, SEC filings can be helpful depending on the granularity of the filing.
   This secondary research helps us evaluate a market opportunity and gives us some numbers to have confidence in our assumptions when we go to build a marketing and sales model. This is pretty standard basic practice for most marketing initiatives.
3. Now, we can dive into the juicy parts. We can start to evaluate what our competitors’ brand experience is like. We would begin listening on Twitter and Google Alerts. Scouring Facebook for brand mentions and reviewing their fan pages for engagement and content. Scanning our competitors’ blogs for comments and how the company interacts and treats its users is another opportunity to learn.
4. Next up, we would evaluate the customer buying experience funnel. This would include everything from search results to their ecommerce or in-store experience. We would be looking for ways to enhance the experience from first point of contact all the way to checkout either online or in a store. Constantly asking ourselves, “Where can we make this better? More remarkable? More valuable in exchange for their time?”
5. If it’s a product company we are marketing, we can read over the user reviews on sites like Amazon. These offer tremendous clues on what works and what doesn’t in the entire brand experience. If it’s a service based company check out Google Reviews or Yelp! for customer feedback.