Bureau West

Many of our clients want to make their websites more effective – that is, they want site visitors to get what they want more easily.  One tool used for this is called “personas.”  A persona is a profile of a specific type of site user.  Personas are somewhat similar to segments, but they go further: they’re based on the goals of different users when they come to your site.  For example, a financial services site might target different segments based on their investable assets.  But within those segments, there might be different personas, such as those who are new to investing, those who want great depth of information and those who just want to know what the analysts recommend.  Once we uncover the main personas among site users, the site can be designed to address the needs of each of them (and make sure not to alienate any of them).

How do we discover the personas for a given site? Unlike website usability research, where we prefer one-on-one interviews, we’ve found that online bulletin board focus groups work particularly well for persona development.  With online bulletin board focus groups, participants log in and answer questions at their convenience over the course of several days.  We provide links to various pages on the site being researched and on competitive sites.  Participants click on the link, and then the come back to the discussion and answer questions about the perceived value of what they saw, what they liked, what they wish were included, etc.  The bulletin board format gives participants the time to answer in depth.  And it allows us to get their individual opinions before they see others’ answers, giving us the benefit of the synergy of group discussion without the drawback of a dominator swaying others’ opinions.

The needs and preferences of the different participants tend to cluster in groups, enabling us to develop personas.

Online bulletin board focus groups are not the newest research method out there, and we certainly employ newer methods such as remote webcam focus groups and video diaries, but in many cases, we find that regular, text-based online bulletin board focus groups are very effective (and cost-effective) for a wide variety of research questions, and not just for websites.  Some examples: we’ve used them to ask patients what they think of an idea for a new medical device and to get movie-goers across the country to react to movie trailers.

To discuss the best way to answer your research questions, give us a call at (818) 752-7210.

When conducting research, we frequently want to get at people’s emotions.  What excites people?  What gets their attention?  If we know that, we can market much more effectively.

The question is, how can we uncover people’s feelings when they might not even be aware of their emotional reactions themselves?  One way to do this is to utilize projective techniques in focus groups, using metaphors and visuals to go beyond participants’ rational side. 

But there’s a new way to get at emotions more directly: bio-metric research.  Participants wear a lightweight vest that measures galvanic skin response, heart rate, respiration and movement.  Changes in those measures have a direct correlation with emotional involvement. 

The results are quite remarkable.  When testing commercials, we see the exact points when viewers are engaged and when they lose interest, enabling advertisers to create advertising that is much more memorable and effective.  We also use this method with print ads, websites and new product research to uncover people’s “hot buttons” – when they’re most engaged – as well as understanding which elements are unexciting to people.

We find we can gain deep insights by looking at the discrepancies between what research participants say and their emotional reactions.  These discrepancies can be an extremely rich source of insights.  And since the method is fairly new, we’re still discovering new ways in which it can help marketers.  Give us a call at (818) 752-7210 and we can talk about the best ways to understand what makes your customers tick.

A few recent articles have been talking about a social media “backlash,” where marketers are realizing that social media marketing isn’t always the best approach.  An article on businessweek.com talks about social media marketing “myths” such as: social media marketing is free (it’s not really, since it requires many hours of work) or that social media sites are great places to find new customers (your prospects may not want to interact with you there).  The article also points out that companies don’t have to be on every social media site.  B2B companies will probably be more successful utilizing LinkedIn than MySpace.

However, some companies have used social media successfully for marketing, and in different ways.  It’s worth looking at some examples:

• Ad agency Centric generated a great deal of exposure for the movie Batman Gotham Knight by encouraging fans to download a widget — the more people who installed the widget, the brighter the Bat-signal would glow.  They generated over a million page views.  Clearly, this was a product with customers who wanted to interact and Centric found a hook to get their interest.

• For a completely different use of social media, consider Comcast.  The company monitors Twitter for negative comments about the company and tries to resolve the problems mentioned.  For a large company like Comcast, that seems like a good investment — a small expense for potentially very positive PR.

• A social media site can’t make you a cup of coffee, but Starbucks has been quite successful using social media marketing.  The company likes to combine social media marketing with traditional advertising.  For example, they sponsored a coffee giveaway on election day, promoting it with a TV commercial as well as a video on YouTube and advertising on Facebook encouraging users to forward the ad to tell their friends about the free coffee.

• Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign promised a free Whopper hamburger to anyone who would “sacrifice” (that is, “de-friend”) ten Facebook friends.  While this campaign might seem to be “anti” social media, the fact is, Burger King knows their customers are on Facebook and they found a novel way to get their attention.

The bottom line: while social media marketing may be new and overhyped, it also can provide significant opportunities for marketers.  Keeping an eye on what other companies are doing could inspire an effective social media marketing idea for your company.

We can help you learn what motivates your customers; give us a call at (818) 752-7210.

Sources: “Beware Social Media Marketing Myths,” Businessweek.com, May 26, 2009;  “The Groundswell of Social Media Backlash,” Collaboration 2.0, May 23, 2009; “Million Dollar Widget,” Centric blog, September 13, 2008; “Beware the Social Media Charlatans,” PC World, May 20, 2009

Many articles are being written about how companies should not cut back on marketing during the recession.  While this may be true, many companies have no choice in the matter because of decreased revenues.  So companies are looking for ways to market more effectively.

There’s some great advice in a recent article by marketing consultant David Evans.  Among other things, he suggests looking at new ways to segment your customers more profitably.  For example, rather than segmenting based on purchase size, a company might do better defining customer segments based on their needs.  Once segments with the highest potential are identified, you can focus your marketing dollars on those segments.

Evans suggests refreshing customer insights to understand how purchase intentions are impacted by the economy.  Unsurprisingly, we couldn’t agree more!

An article in the Financial Times makes another great point: companies have an opportunity to stand out when their competitors spend less on marketing.  “Recessions offer us the opportunity to be heard.”  With smart marketing strategy, your company may be able to emerge from this recession ahead of the competition!

To discover the smartest ways to connect with your customers, call us at (818) 752-7210.

Sources: “Follow These 5 Marketing Tactics to Succeed During the Downturn – Part 1: Offline,” evmarkpartners.com, February 13, 2009; “Marketing during economic downturns,” Financial Times, February 5, 2009