It’s no mystery that it’s critical to intimately understand the personas you serve if you want your marketing to be successful. Once you identify where your personas congregate online, you can observe their conversations and identify the problems they’re struggling with. More importantly, you can see the exact words they use as they search for solutions to their challenges.
If you’re a B2B company, there are certain positions within an organization who are responsible for solving the problems your product or service helps to solve. The bulk of the challenges they face are probably similar whether it’s a CMO, CFO or a business owner, but there will be subtle differences based on the position, size of the organization or the industry.
One of the things creating these challenges that many people are struggling to get a handle on, is the period of tremendous change that we currently live in. Let’s take a look at a few of the changes to our environment that might be impacting your personas the most…
Technology.
When Baby Boomers and Gen Xers were growing up and their brains were most impressionable, the personal computer didn’t even exist. This has created a reality where they’ve been forced to play catchup.
This is remarkable when you realize these two generations, combined with the Silent and Greatest generations make up the majority of the population! That’s a lot of people put in the position to utter the words, “That’s not the way we do things around here” in almost every area of their lives.
Technology has created a huge generational divide and the result is a large volume of insecure people who are scared to death of losing their relevancy. Many of these individuals are too proud to admit they are scared and they typically shake their finger while ridiculing the younger generations and discounting them as thinking they’re entitled.
Communication.
Long gone are the days where we had to rely on reaching someone when they were in their home or at work within range of hearing the phone ring. You can virtually reach anyone on the planet, anytime, from almost anywhere. Except those people wagging their fingers while yelling at the millennials proclaiming the young people don’t even know how to communicate.
I find this one funny! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched my kids let their entire 500 “friend” network know what’s going on the SECOND they get a hang nail. I used to go a couple days without knowing what happened to my best friends if I spent a couple days with my grandparents.
Also falling under the umbrella of communication, is the “proper use” of the English language. I’m sorry, but I think it’s ridiculous to judge someone’s intelligence based on how they structure a sentence, or whether they LOL while telling you to STFU as their opinion is discounted because they haven’t yet “put in their time.”
Education.
I believe the days of enduring enormous amounts of student debt and then hoping you can get a job within your area of study are numbered. There are many ways to learn, and innovation is required for institutions of higher learning to remain relevant, or even to survive.
Don’t get me wrong. I think education is extremely important! I simply believe the way we learn has changed in a massive way, and unfortunately, education as a whole is changing far too slowly to keep up.
This slow pace is creating huge opportunities for organizations to run boot camps, and explore other educational formats where students can spend 2-3 months learning a skill that leads to immediate employment. And, “No” these aren’t simply blue collar jobs. These are professional positions that pay six figures.
Marketing professionals who actively find ways to assist the personas they serve as they navigate the massive changes in these three areas are going to be extremely valuable to the clients they serve. This type of assistance rises far above “superficial,” and clearly communicates that you care about far more than simply their “wallet share.”
Do you see our current situation similarly? Does what I’ve written piss you off? Do you feel I’ve missed something? Regardless…I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! Positive or negative.
I’ll be exploring this topic a bit deeper in my coming posts and hope you’ll subscribe.
