As marketers accumulate information about customers, it is also important to identify common characteristics and patterns to help guide messaging, engagement and offers. Behaviors that contribute to your business objectives like, sales, advocacy, sharing, referrals and repeat business might contribute to your understanding of an “ideal” customers that can be characterized as a persona: Admin Bob – Influences the CEO on software purchases and cares about price, service and speed. Being able to identify your “best” customers also means there’s another end to the spectrum: patterns that reflect undesirable customer behaviors and an “avoid” persona: Gatekeeper Jane – Maintains power by filtering information to the CEO about software purchases.
Savvy internet marketers work hard to uncover and understand the common characteristics of their buying audiences, segmenting them into groups and even going so far as to develop personas. They do this for a very good reason, how can you optimize your content for an audience if you don’t know who they are or what they want? This customer-centric approach to marketing is one that Lee has been advocating for years (see Chapter 6 of Optimize for some good nuggets)