Digital Customer Experience (MKTG32900)

Seminar 3 - Customer Persona (Task 1c)

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Agenda
▪ This week’s Checkbox
▪ Task1c
▪ Activity 1
▪ Activity 2
▪ Benefits of persona
▪ Tips for task1c
▪ Work on task 1c

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This Week’s Checkbox
▪ Have decided on an organisation for your assessment?
▪ Have you decided on the theme?
▪ Have you started working on your poster presentation?
▪ Did you attend the lecture last week?
▪ Self-Directed Learning?

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Task 1c

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Customer Persona
▪ Customer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal
customers based on data and research (Kusinitz, 2022).
▪ Personas depict a static picture of the organisation's ideal buyer, their habits, needs
and behavior.

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Customer Persona
▪ Profiling can be based on numerous factors:
▪ Demographics – ages, gender, education,
occupation, company size (B2B), position in
buying unit (B2B)
▪ Psychographics – goals, tasks, motivations
▪ Webographics – how they use the online
channel: experience, usage location, usage
form, frequency, how they interact online.

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Persona vs. Target Segment

Source: https://rockcontent.com/blog/buyer-persona/
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Key Elements of a Customer Persona
(Heinze et al. 2020) tienda fisica, an advert on the tube, ig content, etc

• Who – short biography of customer • Trust touchpoints – where content and

(demographics, location etc.) preferred channels intersect and create brand
trust
deadlinks, too much info, etc
• What – their primary and secondary goals
• Pain touchpoints – objections they have to the
• Where – where they spend their time on or brand, content or channels used
offline • Customer, consumer or influencers – their
role as a consumer, customer and influencer
• Content – types of content they prefer
• ‘They say’ – using quotes/sound bites to make
• Channels – types of online (and offline) the persona ‘come alive’
channels they prefer
• ‘We say’ – the messages the brand might send
to the persona
• Keywords – keywords and phrases associated
with the persona
Capturing Customer Data and Insights
(Hubspot, 2021)
▪ Organisations can use a variety of sources to capture customer data and insights to create personas as well
as to inform customer experience improvements. ucas, p.e

First Party Data Primary Research Third-Party Data

• Data in CRM systems • Surveys • Online panel data

• Customer feedback • Interviews • Secondary research
• Data from analytics • Focus groups reports
• Social media profiling • Third-party tools
• Data from email
service platforms

Reminder: You are NOT expected to conduct primary research for your assignment
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Customer Feedback
• Can reveal the most common questions and issues
Online Chat Transcripts customers have as part of their experience with a brand.

• Provide insights into common issues in customer

Complaints experience

Other Customer Service • Can reveal questions asked by customers as well as

Interactions provision of any wider feedback from customers.

• Can be used to highlight potential pain points or positive

Reviews points in customer experience

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How to Create Persona?
▪ 1) Online Tools (free)

▪ https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-
persona
▪ https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/
buyer-persona-research

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How to Create Persona?
▪ 2) Online Tools (free)

▪ https://xtensio.com/user-
persona-template/

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Activity- 1
▪ Read the example of (i) ad hoc persona and (ii) data-driven persona under
‘Week 2’ on NOW
▪ What are the differences between ad hoc persona and data driven persona?
▪ Discuss what data and/or references were used to create the data driven persona.

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Activity- 2 Evaluating the personas
▪ Go to your learning room and download/open the pdf file named “Activity2 Customer
Personas” (If you are unable to download the pdf from the learning room. The next slides contain the 4 examples)
▪ You will see 4 examples of customer persona.
Your Task
1. Evaluate the personas (e.g. Clarity, presentation, completeness, relevance to the company, potential
effectiveness, etc.)
2. Give each persona a score out of 10 (10 being the best)
3. Match the persona with the company/ Brand (Megabus, Zara, Reebok, and Soundcloud)
4. Share the evaluations and feedback with the class, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement
for each person(What is missing, and what could be added?)

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Example 1 – Company/Brand???

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Example 2 – Company/ Brand???

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Example 3 – Company / Brand???

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Example 4 – Company/ Brand???

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Benefits of the Persona
▪ Generally… personas…
▪ Bring focus
▪ serving a specific audience
▪ Build empathy
▪ help live in your users’ shoes
▪ Encourage consensus
▪ bring the team together to create one shared vision of exactly whom we’re designing for
▪ Create efficiency
▪ ensure key decision making earlier
▪ Lead to better decisions
▪ personas are grounded in research, all stakeholders feel confident; everyone knows how to
satisfy them and how that leads to business results.
(Mulder & Yaar, 2006)

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Useful Resources
▪ 10 Online Customer Research Tools- Link
▪ The Persona Canvas: Templates - Link
▪ How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business – Link
▪ McLachlan, S. (2021) How to build a buyer persona. Hootsuite.com.
https://blog.hootsuite.com/buyer-persona/
▪ Alluhaib, A. (2019) Customer insight engine: a glimpse into next-generation
analytics. Business Intelligence Journal, Vol 24(1), pp20-29

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Tips for Task 1c
• Probably you don’t work for your chosen organisation and therefore don’t
have access to internal data and customer data collected by your chosen
organisation.
• You are not allowed to conduct any types of primary research.
• You need to look at various sources of secondary data to develop a persona
for your chosen organisation.
• You can use your own way or template builder to create a persona

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Tips for Task 1c
▪ Some useful sources:
• Check company’s website and other digital channels
• Visit Mintel.com (through NTU library) to find information about customer data
• Visit ACORN to find customer characteristics
• Visit competitors’ website for information
• Do secondary research on changes in consumer behaviour specifically in the chosen organisation sector
• https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/pandemic-consumer-behaviour-changes/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/microsoft_/2022/11/02/the-data-bias-challenge-creating-more-inclusive-customer-decision-
journeys/
• Provide evidence for information on your persona
• See websites such as
• https://answerthepublic.com (keyword search)
• https://www.similarweb.com (sources of your company traffic)
• https://www.statista.com (customer data – limited access)
• https://www.euromonitor.com (customer and market data; through NTU library)

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Work on task 1c

• Review the goals and channels selected in task1b

• Explore the sources from where you can get the
information
• Start organising the information and start filling in.

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Key Texts
Chapter 2, 4 Chapter 8

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Next Week
• Topic: Channel Goals and Tools
• Start planning and working on your presentation
• Be prepared: Learning materials and self-directed learning

We will focus on Task 2a

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References
▪ Alluhaib, A., 2019. Customer insight engine: a glimpse into next-generation analytics. Business Intelligence Journal, Vol 24(1), pp20-29
▪ Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2019. Digital marketing. 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson.
▪ Chaffey, D., Hemphill, T. and Edmundson-Bird, D., 2019. Digital business and e-commerce management. 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson.
▪ Chaffey, D. and Smith, P., 2017. Digital marketing excellence. 5th ed. New York: Routledge.
▪ Farese, D., 2021. How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template. [online] blog.hubspot.com. Available at:
<https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/market-research-buyers-journey-guide> [Accessed 3 February 2022].
▪ Heinze, A., 2020. Digital and Social Media Marketing. 2nd ed. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
▪ Kusinitz, S., 2022. The Definition of a Buyer Persona. [online] blog.hubspot.com. Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-
persona-definition-under-100-sr> [Accessed 18 January 2023].
▪ McLachlan, S., 2021. How to build a buyer persona. [online] Hootsuite.com. Available at: <https://blog.hootsuite.com/buyer-persona/>
[Accessed 3 February 2022].
▪ Mulder, S. and Yaar, Z., 2006. The user is always right: A practical guide to creating and using personas for the web. New Riders.
▪ Vaughan, P., 2021. How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Persona Template]. [online] Blog.hubspot.com.
Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-research> [Accessed 22 February 2021].

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