Mrs Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel is today's song. A very catchy classic written for The Graduate (what a movie!).
The song is based on a fictional character ‘Mrs Robinson’, who many believe was meant to be the embodiment of women of a particular age, living in a particular era, with particular needs, wants and struggles in the 60’s.
This makes me think of fictional representations or ‘buyer personas’, which are a very powerful marketing concept.
Buyer personas describe who your ideal customers are, what their pain points are and how they make decisions.
They are used in marketing to internalise the ideal customer you are trying to attract, tailor promotional activity and to better relate to your customers as people.
It’s a good way to avoid the rookie error of thinking ‘inside out’ about customer acquisition.
But your business offering should be about the needs of your customer first, the needs of the business second.
To make your personas valuable they should be detailed and precise using market research and real data from your existing customers.
What’s their name?
What do they like to do at the weekend?
What drives them to get out of bed in the morning?
Getting under the skin of your personas and what motivates them can help shape your marketing strategy to meet them where they are at (and it can also be quite fun! Who doesn’t love flexing their imagination muscles).
So, who is your business’ Mrs Robinson?