Understand why buyer personas are important for your sales or lead generation website, the difference between segments and personas and see how a hotel increased conversion rates by 100% through personas and AB testing.

2. Use Buyer Personas or Lose sales
Who am I?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/depeshmandalia

3. What is a Buyer Persona?
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Buyer
Persona
Who buyers are?
What are their goals?
How they think and, buy?Why they make such buying
decisions?
Where do they buy?
When do they decide
to buy?

4. Buyer Personas
● They are based on grouped attributes
○ Demographics
○ Needs, preferences and motivations
○ Other areas related to your business
● They are not segments
● They are models / representations / views
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5. This is not a persona
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Our target customer

6. This is also not a persona
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7. This is a persona
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8. Segments and Personas work
together to improve your marketing
“Segments help you identify your target consumer”
“Personas help you communicate better with them”
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9. Why do you need “Personas”?
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10. Spray and pray - it ain’t pretty
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11. Targeted customers
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12. Collecting data for Personas
1. You
2. Your customers
3. Non-customers
4. National statistics data
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13. Real-life application
How a UK hotel company
Increased conversion 100%
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14. What we did
● Online survey + national statistics to create Buyer Personas
● Matched intent vs action for tracking
● Enhanced the user journey with AB testing to meet the
needs of each persona
● Resulted in a doubling of the online conversion rate
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15. Conducted a website survey
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BEG
INNER
+
TECHNIQ
UE

16. Started with a simple question
‘What is the reason for your visit today?’
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17. What is the reason for your visit
today?
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18. Conducting the intent survey
The second question:
‘Are you likely to book a break online today?’
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19. Understood visitor interactions against
our KPIs
15/11/2011
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20. Conducting the intent survey
The final question was open ended:
‘Is there anything you couldn’t find or needed more information
on?’
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21. Conducting the intent survey
Whilst we asked 3 questions we also collected some additional
information
We asked for their gender, DOB and postcode...
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22. Got data. Now what?
Needed to make sense of the data in context of user journeys
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23. Buyer personas
3 Buyer Personas were enough to help understand intent and action.
15/11/2011
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Product & Content Consumers
Price & Offer Prospects
Online Bookers
INTERM
EDIATE
TECHNIQ
UE

24. Enhanced using external data
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ADVANCED
TECHNIQ
UE
via: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/index.html

25. Example profiles via CACI/Acorn
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26. Reshaping Personas via Segments
15/11/2011
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Less affluent older
customers
Low affluence
younger customers
Affluent older
customers
Young affluent
customers
Blues Greens
RedsYellows
Life-stage
Affluence

27. Segmentation
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Our target customer

28. Evaluating our online strategy
○ Focus on Greens and Blues
○ Product pivot for Yellows and Reds
○ Build the online experience to match expectations
○ The ‘female’ Green was our primary target and drove growth
marketing decisions
15/11/2011
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Blues
Greens
RedsYellows

29. Product & Content Consumers
Discovery
○ Who are [brand]?
○ Is [brand] hotels right for me?
○ What type of people go?
○ Why should I book with you?
Research
○ What’s on offer?
○ Where can I go?
○ When can I go?
○ What can I do?
○ Roughly how much?
○ Can I compare hotels/resorts?
15/11/2011
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B
l
u
e
s
Gre
ens
R
e
d
s
Y
e
ll
o
w
s

30. Use Buyer Personas or Lose sales

31. Matching funnel KPIs to Personas
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32. Phew!
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33. Example of applied Buyer Personas
15/11/2011
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CONTROL CHALLENGER

34. Example of applied Buyer Personas
15/11/2011
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CONTROL CHALLENGER
Product & Content
Consumers
Price & Offer Prospects
Online Bookers

35. Example of applied Buyer Personas
15/11/2011
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CONTROL CHALLENGER
Product & Content
Consumers
Price & Offer Prospects
Online Bookers
Bookings up 7%

36. How we doubled sales
Reviewed the user journey reflecting
the needs of each persona
Over a period of 6 months improved
conversion through each step of the
journey by communicating better with
our Buyer Personas
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37. Customer experience framework
15/11/2011
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Conversion
Toolkit
Reporting &
Insight
Customer
Experience
Test &
Learn
Develop &
Improve
Split testing
Session
Capture
Online Survey
Landing Pages
Campaigns
Merchandising
BI/CRM
“Call Tracker”
Creative
MVT
Focus groups Lab tests
Functionality
development
Site structure, IA
Behavioural targeting
Designs
Product
Analytics
Personas
Promotions

38. 5 Key takeaways
1. Use website surveys, now
2. Create personas using whatever resource you can
Try https://xtensio.com/user-persona
Think like your customer
Solve their problems and improve their experience
3. Map your communications to personas
Landing page experience
Visual and written communications
Tools & features
4. Measure, test and learn
5. Evolve and grow!
Use Buyer Personas or Lose sales

39. END.
15/11/2011
Use Buyer Personas or Lose sales
by Depesh Mandalia
Growth Marketer, Consultant and Advisor
@depesh
in/depeshmandalia
Created on behalf of WebEngage, a Multi-channel User
Engagement Platform for businesses of all sizes. Experts in
customer engagement.