We’ve had the pleasure of delivering many persona workshops in our time. Whilst some might see persona work as fluff (spoiler: we think they’re wrong!), the results we’ve seen from clients who have put in the graft to master their personas really speak volumes about the power of drilling down into the detail, and we believe persona workshops are an integral part of a dynamic marketing strategy.
We’ve worked with everyone from technology firms to renewable energy organisations on building out personas that inform their marketing strategy and help them, crucially, be human in their approach. So we wanted to share some of the benefits of a persona workshop for anyone who feels a little stuck or jaded that their current marketing approaches aren’t quite doing it.
First, let’s not assume everyone knows what a buyer or user persona is. To us at Cameo, buyer personas are a semi-fictionalised version of a company’s ideal buyer, backed up with research and opinions, and then validated with actual customer input.
In a workshop setting, team members come together to share their knowledge and experience of dealing with these personas, to a set template of questions and prompts.
There can be several (we tend to advise starting with 2 or 3) and their objectives and motivations will probably be different, so it’s important to drill down into this detail in order to be targeted in your approach.
Once personas have been established, the knowledge you glean from the session can be used across every aspect of your marketing strategy, helping you to optimise your budget, communicate effectively with your ideal customer and have a framework to work with for comms going forward. How lovely.
3 benefits of a Persona Workshop
You can identify the ideal market with the biggest revenue potential
Whenever we run a workshop, no matter who the client is, there is one stand-out buyer persona that we end up focusing a lot of the time on. The primary persona, if you will. This persona is the bread and butter of the customer base and has the biggest earning potential, but for whatever reason, the business currently isn’t quite hitting the mark in reaching them via their marketing efforts.
A persona workshop helps marketing professionals to identify this persona, build out a full profile, validate it with their existing customers that fit the bill and develop a strategy that caters to their triggers, objectives and motivations. Thus, massively improving the potential of success with this key persona!
Succinctly outlining your Buyer Journeys
Each persona may well have a very different buyer journey. Some of them might be quite similar. But there usually tend to be blind spots and a workshop is a great way of unearthing these and bringing in expertise from other areas of the business, like customer relations and sales.
This gives a holistic view of the buyer journey and means every aspect of the strategy going forward can be targeted at sending the right message at the right time. Which, let’s face it, is what marketing is all about!
Sharing ideas in an open forum
There’s nothing quite like a workshop to unearth brilliant ideas that have never occurred before, purely because someone in the room says something that triggers the thought. We’ve been in the room when clients have had a total EUREKA moment and it’s great to see this excitement and passion come to life.
The truth is, thanks to the pandemic’s impact on our working lives, a lot of us don’t get together to throw around ideas as much as we used to, or that we’d like to.
Setting aside the time to run a buyer persona workshop is worth it for the practical aspects like outlining buyer journeys and informing your marketing strategy, but they’re also hugely valuable from an employee empowerment point of view, giving your team members a voice, allowing them to contribute to this crucial piece of work and hearing ideas from across the business, depending on who you have involved in the session.
What to expect from a Buyer Persona workshop
To give a glimpse into how we do Buyer Persona workshops at Cameo Digital, here are a few things you can expect:
- We’d send questions for your consideration over in advance, along with tips to help you get the right people in the room in order to get the most out of the session.
- The date will be set, the location picked (we can help with this if you’re tight on space thanks to our lovely base at The Clervaux Exchange!) and the agenda outlined. Time is tight in these sessions and your facilitator will keep things moving along on the day. Any ideas that need more exploration can be followed up on, as necessary.
- The day itself. Expect probing questions, ideas aplenty, critical analysis from us, lots of back and forth and even more ideas!
- Snacks! Not all workshop facilitators are equal and let’s just say, we Cameo Digital folk never come empty-handed. Just call it food for thought!
- We then follow up with existing customers/clients that fit the profile of each buyer persona and validate these with them via telephone or Zoom interview.
- Persona reports are created to help you get on with your marketing strategy, which, of course, we can also help with.
Ready to get your buyer persona workshop booked?
Great. Simply get in touch for an informal chat where we can explore your goals and see how we can help you achieve them.
