This week, group 5 members explored the use of buyer
personas in social media marketing by looking at brands that have mastered the
art of marketing to a specific buyer persona via various social media.
Dove
stood at the top of the list as a brand that effectively uses an emotional
connection to engage with “real” women on social media. Through the brand’s
real beauty campaign across various channels, it evokes an emotional, relatable
response that sets the brand in the buyer’s eyes as more than simply beauty
products, but as a source of true beauty empowerment. “‘The buyer persona
profile gives you a chance to truly empathize with target buyers, to step out
of your role as someone who wants to promote a product and see, through your
buyers’ eyes, the circumstances that drive their decision process’” (Scott,
2013, p. 167).
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| via fdfworld.com |
TacoBell is another buyer persona success story highlighted this week for the
brand’s ability to relate to its young, millennial target audience. Active on
appropriate networks like Instagram and Snapchat, Taco Bell sparks passion and
engagement for its products by speaking the language of its target audience.
Campaigning for the addition of a taco emoji, Taco Bell’s Change.orgpetition has gained over 28,000 signatures. This sort of audience
engagement goes deeper than the company’s bottom line; it builds a real,
relatable relationship with the brand and its social media savvy fans.
ESPN
has championed communication with the young, male sports lover buyer persona.
The large company connects with specific consumers on a more niche basis
through the use of tailored outlets to meet the needs of different areas of its
primary buyer persona. For example, ESPN program SportsNation connects with a
younger audience through the use of sports memes, interactive polls, and other
shareable media. The polling that SportsNation uses to engage with its audience
is more than a viewership draw. The network can use this information as free,
engaging market research to continually develop its buyer persona and keep
fresh records of the buyer persona’s needs. Scott (2013) says, “the best way to
learn about buyers and develop buyer persona profiles is to interview people”
(p. 166), and this type of multipurpose audience interview sets the network at
the top of the ranks in buyer persona communication.
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| via cmo.com |
The final company profiled for its successful use of buyer
personas on social media, just in time for Valentine’s Day, is Hallmark.
Hallmark pulls at the heartstrings through sentimental video campaigns like #PutYourHeartToPaper to
connect with its most engaged social media buyer persona, mothers and
grandmothers. Of course women aren’t the only Hallmark customers, but as those
most likely to engage with such a brand on social media, targeting the social
media buyer persona is an important part of the integrated marketing
communications mix.
While each of these companies target different audiences via
social media, they all have one thing in common: utilizing market research to
develop specific buyer personas to strengthen targeted marketing efforts. While defining buyer personas may seem like an optional way to optimize standard marketing efforts, it is in fact a crucial first step in any marketing plan.
Source:
Scott, D. M. (2013). The new rules of
marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications,
blogs, news releases, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly (4th
ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
