The World's Best Buyer Persona System


Book Description

This is a business and marketing book geared toward helping organizations develop a superior buyer persona (customer avatars). The problem with most buyer personas is that they focus on demographics. Unfortunately, demographic-based personas rarely help sales, messaging, customer service, or even contribute to the bottom line. Therefore, the World's Best Buyer Persona(R) System helps you discover how your customers think, and understanding how they think is truly magical! Once you understand how they think, you will be able to create superior messaging that will give you an unfair advantage over your competition by regularly positioning your brand in front of your ideal prospects before your competition even knows they exist.




Buyer Personas


Book Description

Named one of Fortune Magazine’s “5 Best Business Books” in 2015 See your offering through the buyer's eyes for more effective marketing Buyer Personas is the marketer's actionable guide to learning what your buyer wants and how they make decisions. Written by the world's leading authority on buyer personas, this book provides comprehensive coverage of a compelling new way to conduct buyer studies, plus practical advice on adopting the buyer persona approach to measurably improve marketing outcomes. Readers will learn how to segment their customer base, investigate each customer type, and apply a radically more relevant process of message selection, content creation, and distribution through the channels that earn the buyers' trust. Rather than relying on generic data or guesswork to determine what the buyer wants, the buyer persona approach allows companies to ask the buyer directly and obtain more precise and actionable guidance. Buyer personas are composite pictures of the people who buy solutions, services or products, crafted through a unique type of interview with the people the marketer wants to influence. This book provides step-by-step guidance toward implementing the buyer persona approach, with the advice of an internationally-respected expert. Learn who buys what, and why Understand your buyer's goals and how you can address them Tailor your marketing activities to your buyer's expectations See the purchase through the customer's eyes A recent services industry survey reports that 52 percent of their marketers have buyer personas, and another 28 percent expect to add them within the next two years – but only 14.6 percent know how to use them. To avoid letting such a valuable tool go to waste, access the expert perspective in Buyer Personas, and craft a more relevant marketing strategy.




Data-Driven Personas


Book Description

Data-driven personas are a significant advancement in the fields of human-centered informatics and human-computer interaction. Data-driven personas enhance user understanding by combining the empathy inherent with personas with the rationality inherent in analytics using computational methods. Via the employment of these computational methods, the data-driven persona method permits the use of large-scale user data, which is a novel advancement in persona creation. A common approach for increasing stakeholder engagement about audiences, customers, or users, persona creation remained relatively unchanged for several decades. However, the availability of digital user data, data science algorithms, and easy access to analytics platforms provide avenues and opportunities to enhance personas from often sketchy representations of user segments to precise, actionable, interactive decision-making tools—data-driven personas! Using the data-driven approach, the persona profile can serve as an interface to a fully functional analytics system that can present user representation at various levels of information granularity for more task-aligned user insights. We trace the techniques that have enabled the development of data-driven personas and then conceptually frame how one can leverage data-driven personas as tools for both empathizing with and understanding of users. Presenting a conceptual framework consisting of (a) persona benefits, (b) analytics benefits, and (c) decision-making outcomes, we illustrate applying this framework via practical use cases in areas of system design, digital marketing, and content creation to demonstrate the application of data-driven personas in practical applied situations. We then present an overview of a fully functional data-driven persona system as an example of multi-level information aggregation needed for decision making about users. We demonstrate that data-driven personas systems can provide critical, empathetic, and user understanding functionalities for anyone needing such insights.




BrandingPays


Book Description

Globalization and social media have made the world smaller, more connected and infinitely more competitive. The world has changed. Have you? If you don't have the package that will take you to the next level of your career, you need to reinvent your personal brand. BrandingPays(TM), a practical guide to strategic personal branding, will help you refocus your skills and experience so you are the best candidate for the job, career and business opportunities that you desire. Perfect for professionals, entrepreneurs and college students, the step-by-step BrandingPays methodology has been proven in Fortune 500 companies and leading business schools. Former Regis McKenna Inc. Partner Karen Kang builds upon concepts and techniques from the legendary marketing firm that created and launched the Apple brand.




The Psychology of Selling


Book Description

Double and triple your sales--in any market. The purpose of this book is to give you a series of ideas, methods, strategies, and techniques that you can use immediately to make more sales, faster and easier than ever before. It's a promise of prosperity that sales guru Brian Tracy has seen fulfilled again and again. More sales people have become millionaires as a result of listening to and applying his ideas than from any other sales training process ever developed.




Empathetic Marketing


Book Description

With a revised understanding of the science and philosophy behind human needs, businesses will be better equipped to provide long-term satisfaction for their customers. Mark uncovers a framework that will help businesses identify human needs and incorporate this perspective into strategy, and then focuses each chapter on a specific emotional need.




The Essential Persona Lifecycle


Book Description

The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas offers a practical guide to the creation and use of personas, which can help product designers, their team, and their organization become more user focused. This book is for people who just need to know what to do and what order to do it in. It is completely focused on practical tools and methods, without much explanation on why the particular tool or method is the right one. The book discusses the five phases of persona lifecycle: Family planning — Basic ideas and a few tools that will help one get organized Conception and gestation — Step-by-step instructions to move from assumptions to completed personas Birth and maturation — Strategic techniques to get the right information about ones personas out to ones your teammates at the right time Adulthood — Specific tools that will ensure that ones personas are used by the right people at the right times and in the right ways during the product development cycle Lifetime achievement and retirement — Basic ideas and a few tools to you measure the success of the persona effort and prepare for the next one Practical and immediately applicable how-to reference guide for building and using personas – from planning, creating, launching, evaluating, and determining ROI Invaluable guide that gives you a quick reference for incorporating personas into a product development process Features all the essential how-to material from its parent book, The Persona Lifecycle, as a quick, at your fingertips companion




Unconscious Branding


Book Description

For too long marketers have been asking the wrong question. If consumers make decisions unconsciously, why do we persist in asking them directly through traditional marketing research why they do what they do? They simply can't tell us because they don't really know. Before marketers develop strategies, they need to recognize that consumers have strategies too . . .human strategies, not consumer strategies. We need to go beyond asking why, and begin to ask how,behavior change occurs. Here, author DouglasVan Praet takes the most brilliant and revolutionary concepts from cognitive science and applies them to how we market, advertise, and consume in the modern digital age. Van Praet simplifies the most complex object in the known universe - the human brain - into seven codified actionable steps to behavior change. These steps are illustrated using real world examples from advertising, marketing, media and business to consciously unravel what brilliant marketers and ad practitioners have long done intuitively, deconstructing the real story behind some of the greatest marketing and business successes in recent history, such as Nike's "Just Do It" campaign; "Got Milk?"; Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" ;and the infamous Volkswagen "Punch Buggy" launch as well as their beloved "The Force" (Mini Darth Vader) Super Bowl commercial.




The New Rules of Sales and Service


Book Description

The essential roadmap for the new realities of selling when buyers are in charge Sales and service are being radically redefined by the biggest communications revolution in human history. Today buyers are in charge! There is no more 'selling'—there is only buying. When potential customers have near perfect information on the web, it means salespeople must transform from authority to consultant, product narratives must tell a story, and businesses must be agile enough to respond before opportunity is lost. The New Rules of Sales and Service demystifies the new digital commercial landscape and shows you how to stay ahead of the pack. Companies large and small are revolutionizing the way business gets done, and this book takes you inside the new methods and strategies that are critical to success in the modern market. Real-world examples illustrate the new marketplace in action, and demonstrate the brilliant utility of taking a new look at your customer and your business. This new edition has been updated to reflect the current reality of this rapidly-evolving sphere, with fresh strategies, new tools, and new stories. Whether you're an independent contractor, a multi-national corporation, a start-up, or a nonprofit, this book is your essential guide to navigating the new digital marketplace. David Meerman Scott provides up-to-the-minute analysis of the current state of the digital commercial landscape, plus expert guidance toward the concepts, strategies, and tools that every business needs now. Among the topics covered in detail: Why the old rules of sales and service no longer work in an always-on world The new sales cycle and how informative Web content drives the buying process Providing agile, real-time sales and service 24/7 without letting it rule your life The importance of defining and understanding the buyer personas How agile customer service retains existing clients and expands new business Why content-rich websites motivate interest, establish authority, and drive sales How social media is transforming the role of salesperson into valued consultant Because buyers are better informed, and come armed with more choices and opportunities than ever before, everything about sales has changed. Salespeople must adapt because the digital economy has turned the old model on its head, and those who don't keep up will be left behind. The New Rules of Sales and Service is required reading for anyone wanting to stay ahead of the game and grow business now.




eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale


Book Description

Turn prospects into buyers with a powerful emarketing strategy! “Albee shows how smart business-to-business marketers learn about buyers, tell a story, and greatly influence the B2B lead-to-sale process. This is your guide for Web marketing success.” David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and World Wide Rave “A compelling read for both B2B marketing and sales professionals alike, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is a practical and insightful how-to guide that will enable marketers to drive sales conversions and faster sales results.” David Thompson, CEO, Genius.com, and founder of the Sales 2.0 Conference “Albee lays out a path to understanding buyer personas, building their trust, and delivering contagious content that they want to read. A must-read for B2B marketers looking to engage with today’s buyers.” Steven Woods, CTO, Eloqua, and author of Digital Body Language “If you’re looking for a comprehensive, well-researched, single resource to plan, build, execute, and succeed in your eMarketing efforts, then buy this book!” Barry Trailer, managing partner, CSO Insights “New media, content marketing, social networking . . . Ardath cleverly wraps these concepts in a bow and makes this book required reading. . . . Become the expert resource for your customer and watch your business grow.” Joe Pulizzi, coauthor of Get Content Get Customers and founder of Junta42 About the Book Web 2.0 has reshaped the role of marketing in the Complex Sales process. Because prospects now have instant access to information about your company and its products—and your competitors—they can make buying decisions without ever communicating with you. Doing what you’ve always done simply won’t work anymore; you must entirely rethink how you attract and compel buying behavior. With eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, expert B2B marketing strategist Ardath Albee breaks new ground in the field of digital marketing and new customer acquisition. Albee offers techniques and tools for developing and executing strategies that are guaranteed to generate results. The Internet offers an unprecedented opportunity for creating trusted relationships with your prospects and customers—before you ever “meet” them. Never before have marketers enjoyed such a wide-reaching and varied communication platform. Yet with all the noise, you have to stand above the crowd. The key is to converse about meaningful and relevant topics with your diverse audiences, to share your perspectives on what matters to them. That’s just what Albee teaches us to do. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale shares methods to help you: Create eMarketing strategies based on customer perspectives Use a contagious content structure for competitive differentiation Establish trusted relationships Continuously measure, tune, and improve your effectiveness eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale also shares proven approaches to collaborating with sales. You can leverage eMarketing to move leads further into the pipeline while focusing sales time and energy on highly qualified opportunities. The results? Reduced time to sales, increased sales productivity, and growing revenues. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale reveals processes critical to ensuring that you make a powerful, measurable contribution to the lengthy sales process—and to the longterm success of your organization as a whole.