Personas Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Bryan Eisenberg & Jeffrey Eisenberg

Please Don’t Stereotype Your Personas

November 3, 2013

In my last column, I promised to show you how to take these lists of personality mapping attributes and turn them from your typical persona stereotype (soccer mom, techno geek) into characters that ensure deep understanding and empathy. Many of the techniques we use to draft our personas come from the same techniques used by great storytellers and scriptwriters. The goal of a great character is to make you emotionally connect with them and to empathize with who they are. Without empathizing with…

Personas: The Magic behind the Mirror

October 4, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

B2B, blogging, Complex Sales, Content Marketing, Customer Experience, Personas, Strategy

Did you know most persona efforts fail as soon as the personas are completed? Teams create their personas, design slick posters to put on the walls, and say “these are our personas!” Creating personas is really just the beginning. A persona is not a document — it is a clear understanding of a target customer that exists in the minds of your team. Personas evolve as your data around them evolves as well. Every test you do, every insight you…

90% of Content Marketers Suffer From ‘The Curse’ & How to Remedy It

September 20, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

Complex Sales, Content, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Personas, Strategy

When it comes to stuff in which you have a huge personal investment (your kids, your homes, your businesses), you risk losing your objectivity. Hey, it’s a human thing. Too much knowledge about your company and what you offer leads you to answer questions nobody is asking. When you’re inside the bottle, it’s hard to read the label. But that’s also when you risk pushing your own interests at the expense of your customers’ interests. This will often lead you…

Michelle Smith & Persuading Your Potential Customers

September 6, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

Complex Sales, Content Marketing, Customer Experience, Personas, Search Marketing, Web Design

In order to plan the click-through-experience models, or persuasion scenarios, on a web site, we develop archetypical fictional characters composed from real data, called personas, who represent your buying audience. We must allow for multiple personas to reach many of the same pages or marketing entities (emails, ads, tweets, etc.), but must separately address their needs. Before designing a single pixel or writing a single word, we get a feel – using a wireframe – for the experience the personas…

Complexograms: An Illustration of Your Content Marketing Needs

August 23, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

Complex Sales, Content Marketing, Personas, Strategy

The web is littered with uninspired flaccid words, words with virtually no meaning. What some people might call web copy or content. In most cases it exists because the marketer was designated a box to fill in with words. You’ve seen it the 100-150 word count blocks that sit on homepages here and there. Think of it as checkbox copy, copy that had to be written to check off a box. It has gotten a bit better over the last…

Complex Sales and the Persona Creation Process

August 19, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

Complex Sales, Content Marketing, Personas

How do you define a complex sale? Is it a B2B purchase? Is it planning a family vacation for 2 adults and 3 kids ranging in age from 4-12. Can it be purchasing new pillows for your bed? How about when deciding on an enterprise testing and targeting solution? As marketers we use the term frequently but as I often find people sort of know what it is when they see it, but don’t really define it well. You’ll often…

What People Do on Your Site and Why

July 29, 2013

Bryan Eisenberg

Customer Experience, Personas, Strategy

Ever since Google Analytics was introduced in 2006 people began an obsession with “what” happened on their website. They could understand that a certain number of visitors came to the website, that so many of them used the internal search, and that so many clicked here versus there. However, in order to progress to the next level in the analytics journey, you need to begin to understand “why” these things happen. Are there particular elements that decide certain behaviors on…

Conversion Optimization 101: Perfectly Persuasive PPC Landing Pages

November 14, 2012

Bryan Eisenberg

Ad Continuity, Content Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization 101, Landing Page, Landing Page, Lead Generation, Personas, PPC, Scent, Search Marketing, Web Design

Last week, in our Conversion Optimization challenge we looked at the following PPC ad: and the corresponding landing page (image capture below): How would you optimize the ad and the landing page? My general guidelines for marketing with landing pages: Start your marketing with your landing page and ask yourself how it answer your personas’ questions and needs. Then choose an ad or email that would make them want to click and see that page. 7 Steps to Persuasive Landing Pages Step…