I was reviewing my latest newsletter from Marketing Sherpa and was grabbed by a blog entry from Anne Holland called My Shoe Fetish and Why Personas are Invaluable for Marketing She goes into detail on how the “persona” concept was illustrated to her really vividly through a simple moment on a park bench in Newport with her husband.

Saturday night in Newport is date night. Hundreds of visiting couples from all over the world strolled by us. I amused myself by forming theories about women’s shoes. The higher the heel, I figured, the less secure she was in the relationship. Women in flats seemed ultra comfortable, in more ways than one.

I turned to my husband to share this revelation only to find he was staring in a completely different direction. Turns out gangs of small boys were rocketing down a hill a few feet from us on skateboards — in heavy two-lane traffic.

One of them, going roughly 30 MPH while crossing lanes, actually answered his ringing cell phone at the same time and yelled, “Don’t call me now, Mom, I’m busy.” I can only imagine the heart attack the mother would have had had she known precisely what he was doing when she called.

Anyway, it was at that moment that the incredible usefulness of persona-based marketing was brought home to me.

There we were — two people watching the world go by from the exact same park bench. But for one of us, it was a thrilling shoe-fashion show, and for the other an exciting sporting event.

If that park bench instead were a marketing communication (or Web site) and you tried to create an “average” message to attract the “average” of us two, you would have completely, utterly failed.

Our attentions were simply too different. You can’t average-out separate passions into one general message to please both.

And that’s what persona marketing is. You create research-based characters each matching one of the very distinct groups of folks who visit your site or view your marcom. And then you make sure there’s distinct content on that site or marcom specifically created to please each of them.

No one general message will ever work well because there are no average people.

I am totally looking forward to the report they release on this. I’m a sales guy and not a marketing maven by any means. I think that what she really is getting at here is to know your customer. If you know (accurately) who your customer is, you can start to do a couple of things in the affiliate marketing context:

1. Start building landing pages that appeal to that “persona” this can go to design elements, art, copy, etc. Tell the story that pertains to the segment you are marketing to and do it in a way that gets the desired reaction from people who match the persona (focus group?)

2. Expand this idea out to your affiliate recruiting. Once you know who you are trying to reach, go to the sites/blogs etc. that your targeted clients would go to. Immerse yourself in that “culture” and learn from it.

3. Develop linking content and rich media that speaks to the “personas” you are tring to reach and explain this to your affiliates and encourage them to link accordingly.

Once you think you have things figured out, test until you get it right.

There are some great comments there from folks smarter than me on the marketing front. Have a look and learn all you can. Your bottom line may benefit in the end.

Happy Selling!

Wade Tonkin
Director of Sales- North America
ForgeBusiness USA