Persona Perfect: Mastering Marketing Personas in eCommerce

Matt: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the e commerce podcast with me, your host Matt Edmundson. Besides me is the beautiful, talented Sadaf Beynon again, the show's producer, here in our little mini series in August. I'm calling it a little mini series, Sadaf, because I can't think of a better name to call it, if I'm honest with you.

It sounds more grandiose maybe than what it actually is. Uh, but we're yeah, we're here in august doing something a little bit different on e commerce podcast uh, we're chatting about some of the Workshops that we've had on e commerce cohort and the lessons that we have learned as a result of them If you're new to the e commerce podcast then e commerce cohort is basically the The thing that sponsors the e commerce podcast wants for better at the thing the thing that sponsors I need a better Better intro than that Um, but yeah e commerce cohort is part of what we do here It's like a monthly mastermind group with [00:01:00] coaching and and all kinds of good stuff in it.

And so that's what we Have every month we have an expert workshop and throughout August, we thought we'd do some shorter, smaller episodes where we just pick off some of the lessons that we've learned in cohorts, talk about those, gives you an insight into what cohort is, helps you understand it a little bit more, um, and also gets to profile some of the lessons that we've learned ourselves.

In cohort, which is great and I just love talking about Ecom and also it means the episodes a little bit shorter Which is good during August as we're all probably doing other things in August on where we all sort of take August a little Bit more of a chill seat some of you listening to this because I know people listen to this around the world We're going no Matt.

We don't we work really hard in August. Can you stop with this? We're taking August off nonsense I'm sorry That's you, but I, for one, I'm taking August off. So it's, um, it's good to be doing these. So yes, let's carry on. Sadaf, how are we doing by the way? Uh, cause we've not actually talked that much. We've just got on the call [00:02:00] and said, right, let's start.

We just hit the record button. Uh, and you got up late this morning. That's as much as I know.

Sadaf: Just a little bit late. And, um. I've got my, I've got my coffee. So I've got my caffeine fix and we're good to go.

Matt: Awesome. Awesome. In case you've not heard any of the other August episodes, by the way, Sadaf, who is the show's producer, normally works here in Liverpool, but is in.

Canada at the moment visiting family and so you're working from Canada, hence the reason we look like we're miles apart. We're not in the studio and um, you're drinking coffee first thing in the morning and I've just, actually if I, if I, I show you this, I've just finished some ice cream. That was, that was on my desk.

You're keeping that quiet? Yeah, well, you know. I don't like to brag.

So yes, I had a bit of the old ice cream going on there. So, um, so yes. So cohorts, let's [00:03:00] talk about a workshop from Cohort. Which one should we talk about today, Miss Producer?

Sadaf: So, um, so today we are going to dive into the world of marketing personas, um, which we had a workshop that was done by Neil Hoyt.

And, um,

Matt: well, technically the workshop was inspired by Neil. Sorry, inspired. Yeah, I have to get, we have to get it right because it's going in the public sphere. Uh, it was a workshop inspired by Neil. This was a workshop that, um, Neil delivered at Subsummit and I was in the audience taking lots of notes. He was talking about marketing personas and I thought this is fascinating and I took lots of notes and spent a lot of time thinking about how it works for our e commerce business, reapplied them and that was a workshop that we delivered.

So, uh, big thanks, big shout out to Neil, who is coming on the e commerce podcast actually. Uh, he's coming on the show. You're sorting that out, aren't you? I sure [00:04:00] am. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he's uh, he's coming on, which is gonna be great. So Neil, if you don't know, is the chief measurement strategist. I think that's his title from Google.

Mm-hmm. . So he's all things data, basically. He's a really clever dude, really nice guy. Give a really engaging talk as well as sub summit. I bet. Yeah. Top I

Sadaf: top. So, um, Matt, maybe you can talk about what could possibly go wrong. If the marketing persona isn't constructed well

Matt: This is interesting because what neil talked about the show you see when we comes to marketing and we talk about personas everybody Instantly thinks about my customer persona.

Don't know they're like right we have eileen and eileen's in her mid 30s and she has 2. 4 kids, drives around in a Volvo and lives in a semi detached house. And she reads Country House Magazine and she does this and she, and we start to build up this profile of our customers and we call them customer personas, helps us with the marketing.[00:05:00]

Awesome. What Neil talked about, which I thought was really fascinating was not the personas of your end customer, but the persona of your marketing team. So the, the marketeers in your marketing team, which I appreciate for many business is the same person who runs the business and owns it. Um, but if you're like me and you're, you know, you're, you're privileged enough to have a marketing team, then the marketing team can fall into or marketing team members can fall into one of, uh, I think it was five personas that he talked about.

Um, and I was, I have to be honest with you, when he was talking about them, I was, I was properly engaged because I, I saw myself in every single persona, uh, that he went through and I thought, Oh, that's me. Oh, that's me. Oh, that's me. I need to be aware of that. And so yes, he, um. He talked about these sort of five different [00:06:00] personas, uh, and I just loved it.

And the first persona was the one that just absolutely tickled me. And this is, the analogy that Neil used, which I thought was a great analogy, was This guy is The guy that goes into a bar on a Friday night, no one knows him, no one's ever seen him. No one even cares about him in a lot of ways. Just goes into the bar on a Friday night and literally goes around every single lady in that bar and says, will you marry me?

Will you marry me? Will you marry me? And for that guy, it's, it's not about courtship. It's about. Um, getting the whole complete transaction done in one easy go. And so many times as marketers we do that. We market to people in such a way that we're literally asking them to marry us. It's like we've gone from zero to a hundred miles an hour, uh, instantly.

And I thought it was a great analogy. Um, and you know, the obvious thing there is actually, do we just need to step back a little bit, engage in a little bit of courtship, [00:07:00] uh, as they say, and start to woo potential customers rather than just going in and saying, Hey, listen, buy. buy. buy. Uh, and so yeah, it kind of went on from there really.

So that's, I'm not going to lie. Uh, so yeah, really, really interesting conversation around that.

Sadaf: Cool. So, um, I guess, uh, what we're saying is that, that if our personas aren't aligned properly, marketing personas. aren't aligned, aligned properly, then that's going to also misdirect the, the direction of the business.

Is that right? Is that what we're

Matt: saying? Yeah. In essence, what he was saying is there are these ways that we can screw up marketing. And he used this concept of personas, um, like the guy who's in the bar. Um, he used another one that Uh, you know, another persona that always had the belief that they could make everything [00:08:00] right.

Um, that we could win, given enough time and enough energy, we could win everybody, which is not true in marketing. But one of the things that we find very hard to do in marketing is to, um, ignore some people on our email list for the benefit of others. In other words, we give everybody equal time, um, rather than prioritizing time.

Towards those more valuable customers and giving them more time, giving them more attention, giving them more reason to buy from us. Uh, and that kind of action, that kind of behavior, which he described as these sort of these five personas, but it's behaviors, it's things that we do as marketeers, which sabotage sabotage is a better way to say that, isn't it?

Sabotage, uh, marketing efforts. So, yeah, he, in essence, yes, it's that sort of thing that we do. That stops us performing. Well, in our [00:09:00] marketing, um, and he, he used data from Google. Obviously they, they have a lot of data at Google and it's like, these are the, the, the key things that we see people fall in foul of.

Um, and that was really, really interesting. Um, and so, yeah, that, that one, like I said about, you know, the person that believes that they can market to everybody, given enough time and energy, they can win everybody, which is not true. Um, but it is a belief that we have, that is a mistaken. belief, if that makes sense.

Sadaf: Yeah, it does. Thanks for that. Um, I think he also introduced us to the concept of attribution. Could you talk about that too?

Matt: This was hysterical. This was when, uh, you know, you, there's a conversation, Oliver raised it in his workshop, you know, we talked about Oliver and last week. Talking about metrics, right?

And so how do you measure stuff in e commerce? And attribution is one of those things. It's one [00:10:00] of those big things that people are really struggling to get right. Like how do we, you know, there's always a discrepancy between For example, if you do advertising with the Meta platform, whenever you go into Meta, it will tell you that it's generated this many sales, but you look on Google and Google tells you, no, no, no, no, they've generated that many sales.

And then you look at your own platform and your own platform says, no, no, no, no, both of those are wrong. This is how many sales have been generated. And you're like, well, which one's right? Like how do we attribute a sale to a source? Because if we want to understand how well our. Google ads are doing or how well our meta ads are doing, then if we can correctly assign sales to those sources, we can then effectively measure our return on investment.

This is becoming harder and harder to do, um, and something that Oliver touched on actually in the workshop in terms of attribution. But Neil also touched on this, uh, and this was a hysterical one. He gave an example, um, of a lady who bought a pair of shoes. [00:11:00] Which, on the surface, sounds very trivial. Sounds very basic.

Surely this lady just saw an ad, went on to the shop, bought the shoes. No, no, no, no. So, I think there was like two hundred... I can't remember the exact number, so I'm going to get it wrong. But in essence, there was like 260 different interactions this woman had with that company. From their emails, their social media, their website, their paid media, going around all these different channels.

216 over a period, I think of it as like, yeah, over a period of like one to two weeks before she bought anything. Um. And it's hysterical, right? Two hundred and for a pair of shoes! I've no I and I I I still struggle with this, but maybe that's what I do, I don't and maybe I just don't realize it. Um, ironically, I sent a pair of shoes back this morning, and I went on the website to have a look at some [00:12:00] more shoes to replace the ones I sent back, and again...

There was, I've purchased from them before, I've been on their website. They're now showing me those shoes, obviously on social media, because I've been on their website. I haven't yet purchased. They've got emails. Where do they attribute that sale? So even me, it's maybe not going to do 216 different, uh, you know, interactions.

Maybe I'm just doing 30. I don't know, but it's a lot. And so Neil's question was, how do you attribute? How do you take a complex journey of 260 odd interactions and interacting with everything? At what point was the buying decision made? So how do we attribute the point where that lady bought the shoes?

And the answer is you really. really cannot And so you just can't you just don't because it's all it's all connected it's all one big Ecosystem that's all sort of working together. And [00:13:00] again Oliver touched on this. There are certain things you can measure and you should measure Um, and you should obviously try and attribute as well as you can, but you need to understand attributions not perfect and you need to look at your business as a whole, um, in effect.

And so Neil was just basically talking about people that, that spend hours trying to credit sales to a one specific source where possible so they can measure return on investment. And that's just getting harder and harder and harder to do.

Sadaf: So it can, um, help us understand our marketing efforts. But it doesn't necessarily Lay it all out for us.

It kind of points us in the right direction Is that what attribution does then for a marketer?

Matt: Yeah, like I say you can attribute stuff You can you can say right from Facebook. We've got had this many sales. I'm from Instagram. We've had this many sales It's not going to be tightly accurate and we can as long as we apply the same measurement techniques every Month, we're getting at least some relative.

What Neil was saying and what I [00:14:00] think is quite right is you cannot attribute Everything you just can't and so it's not it's not a perfect system And so yes, it's good to look at your ROI from Facebook. Yes, it's good to look at your ROI from Instagram or Pinterest or Google shopping or wherever you do your paid media.

Um, but you need to look at your ROI as a company, as a whole, and bring all this together and, and not be so anally retentive about trying to get attribution bang on perfect. Um, and, and crediting the right accounts with the right numbers, if that makes sense.

Sadaf: Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. So marketing personas are, are, um, quite critical then to the, to a successful marketing strategy as well is what we're, what we're saying.

Matt: Yes, we are. And that's exactly what Neil Hoyne was saying. I'm just going through his notes here, um, that we've [00:15:00] got. Um, but yeah, he talked about. People who are great listeners but poor conversationalists. They capture a lot of data but don't know what to do with it. Um, which he says is deeply frustrating for customers.

You've been on websites, I've been on websites where, um, they've asked you for some information and then again at some point in the future they ask you for that same information or that information in a slightly different way. You're like, well I've just given that to you, why do you not know this? Um, so he talked a lot about that.

Um, he talked about the rational thinkers, which I thought was funny. That belief that consumers are rational when clearly they are very irrational. Um, and it was the perfectionist persona, the one that wanted to attribute everything, um, and have perfect data, but we don't live in a world where you can actually have perfect data.

And so that was, so yeah, just going through. Um, some of his notes here, but he has got a book, Neil. [00:16:00] Uh, so the bar persona, this, these were the personas, that's right. So the bar persona, we talked about the hopeless customer, romantic persona. Their optimism is that they can turn anyone into a perfect customer with just enough time, just enough effort, and just enough budget.

And they treat everybody the same. Uh, which is just crazy. Um, so yeah, all kinds of stuff like that. But let me find you the, his book, um, because I've ordered it, it's arrived and I'm looking forward to reading it. Um, and the book is converted the data driven way to win customers hearts by Neil Hoyne. Uh, from Google, the chief measurement strategist at Google, and his book's got some great reviews, actually.

Um, so I'm looking forward to reading that. Uh, but that was a great one. That really was a great one on, um, uh, on cohort is the word I'm looking for. [00:17:00]

Sadaf: Yeah. Sounds really informative. Is there anything else, Matt, that stuck out to you from his talk?

Matt: Uh, one of the interesting things about Neil was the talk. As far as I understand, this was all hearsay and conjecture. I've not actually asked Neil about this yet. And I don't think Neil would tell me the answer. But there was this rumor going around at Subsummit that one of the keynote speakers couldn't make it.

Uh, and as Neil was going on stage, the organizer's like, could you talk a little bit longer? And he pulled it, he pulled it out of the bag, no questions asked, no problem. No one knew any different and everybody thought you've just done a really engaging talk. So he's a very good communicator, a very good speaker.

Um, it's, uh, it's, it's really fascinating how, how well he actually did that, you know. Um, but yeah, great guy, really great stuff that came through. And, um, yeah, we, like I said, we went through it a lot more in [00:18:00] detail in cohort, but I think. Yeah. When you listen to his notes and read his book, um, and then go, um, you, the question is, am I doing this in my e commerce business?

Am I doing this in our marketing? So for me, they were the questions that we asked, what of these are we doing in our business? Are we like the bar persona guy? Are we like asking everybody to marry us on our first date kind of thing? And Sometimes we were, we were quite aggressive in some of our email campaigns.

Um, and they've changed recently. Our email campaigns have changed. There's a lot more content, a lot more wooing. And I was talking to Shel about this this morning. Our email is killing it at the moment. Better than it ever has. Um, and so, so one thing sort of knocks on and leads it to another. So we've been around for years.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like we're new to this. Um, but it's just great that you, you do something like this workshop and you hear from someone like Neil and you kind of go, Hey, Yeah, actually I need to think this through. [00:19:00] What are the implications of that? And... Um, do we treat every customer the same or do we treat a higher value customer slightly differently?

Are we wooing them in better and more efficient ways? And I think we were probably more on the side of the scale, which said, we're treating everybody equally. We're just sending everybody the same email newsletter. We're giving everybody the same offers. So what would happen? We didn't do that totally, but what would happen if we.

If we focused maybe more time, more budget, more effort just on these customers over here and again. It's pain for us. So it's, yeah, yeah. It's totally worth doing. So we learned a lot actually from that, that workshop. I really enjoyed that one. It was very good for us. Like I say, just listening to his critique of marketeers, just from a data point of view, um, you know, using data to sort of figure it out and then just, uh, looking at your own business and examine it and thinking about what that means was very, very good.

Very helpful. It was a great workshop. Yeah,

Sadaf: [00:20:00] that's cool. Looking forward to having him on our podcast.

Matt: Yeah, he's a legend actually. Yeah, really good. I'm looking forward to it. So we've connected, we've been emailing back and forth and I know you've been talking with his guys about getting him on the show.

Um, and so yeah, looking forward to doing that. Do we have a date yet? We do not have a

Sadaf: date yet.

Matt: Uh, I can tell you we're going to record sometime soon though, maybe September, October time we're recording. September, September,

Sadaf: October. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Looking forward to it.

Sadaf: All right. So I think we can end it there. That's bite size.

Matt: End it there. That's bite size. Yeah. Is that what you said?

Sadaf: That's it.

Matt: Moving on. We're moving. Well, the show's producer said that's it ladies and gentlemen. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. You can tell we talked this one through. I'm going to play this.

Uh, music and just [00:21:00] say thank you so much for joining us this week on the e commerce podcast. I hope you're enjoying your August wherever you are in the world and enjoying hopefully some sunshine and some rest. That's it from me. That's it from Sadaf. We will see you next week. Bye for now.