Using personas to sell more stuff

I had the honour of judging the SmartCompany Web Awards last week. The standard of entries was incredible and it was really hard to pick a winner!

The site that got its nose in front was www.supre.com.au.

The two other finalist sites were www.ozhut.com.au and www.redbubble.com.au.

One thing I liked about Supré was their persona based shopping concept. It’s not something I’ve seen attempted by Australian retailers very often, but it’s an approach which could give you an edge over your competitors if you get it right.

Supré have obviously taken the time to create a persona profile for their three ideal ‘customers’:

• Tomboy
• Femme Fatale
• Rocker

Coming up with the perfect target client is not easy, but a really useful exercise to go through. It means that your business can be truly aligned from the look, feel and content of your website to the approach your sales staff take when dealing with customers in store.

So how do you create persona profiles for perfect customers?

First off, you should go through your existing customer database. You might know a little, or a lot about your previous customers depending on how much information you’ve collected in your sales process, email database capture, previous sales history or CRM, etc.

This data should be segmented into quick wins, starting with gender. Then as you go you can segment further into age, average order-spend, location, etc. If you have retail stores, ask your sales staff to help you define who the perfect customers are and what their profile is.

Once you’ve grouped the data, you can start to give each ‘group’ a person’s name, like Campbell, Amelie or Fred. Try and keep it to just three if possible. You may find it’s just one person you want to talk to.

Then you need to write up a ‘story’ about each of those people.

For example, “Amelie is 19 years old, just out of high school and working in retail as a sales assistant. She’s brash, opinionated and considers herself a bit of a Tomboy. She shares an apartment with her girlfriend and spends a lot of time out on the weekends with her friends socialising. Her ‘style’ and ‘look’ is very important to her and defines the way she likes to be perceived.”

Knowing this means you can write copy and style your website which connects with the perfect customer. Yes, you’re probably going to alienate everyone else to some extent, but in effect, you niche your offer to connect more strongly with the most profitable customers.

It also means that on the ground, your sales staff can be actively scanning for and seeking out the “Amelie’s” as they walk into the store.

Being all things to all people creates a bland, boring turn off.

You probably already niche by product, so try ‘niche by persona’ and make stronger connections.

There’s also a very useful article here if you’d like to understand more about a persona based approach.

For more Online Sales expert advice, click here.

Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation  company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.