Engaging in a dialogue with your audience requires a real understanding of their tastes, problems, and interests. Otherwise, how else would you get their attention?
Marketing uses plenty of methods to get to know users: user tests, surveys, qualitative questionnaires, market research, etc.. This first phase of collecting information is essential in any digital marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategy
Typically, a marketing project manager carries out the following steps in advance:
Market research
Sector analysis
User research
Establishing personas
I’ll go into more detail on these steps in the following parts, but before continuing, I suggest that you apply everything you’ll learn in this course to a real-life project—either one you’re currently working on, or a project you will start in the near future. Choose wisely, because you’ll be creating a campaign on Facebook for this project!
As for me, I'll be developing a video game! It will be called Tetripolis—it’s like Tetris, but with politicians. 🙂
Market Research
The aim of this first phase is to understand the overall market that your audience or your brand inhabits. What are the market trends? Constraints? Its strengths, its weaknesses?
Everyone has their own methods. I immerse myself in reading different sources related to the sector I'm studying (market research from specialist consultancies, carrying out or purchasing surveys, etc.), and I take notes as I go along.
These resources can often be expensive, and are rarely available to students (especially when you are studying independently). However, consulting and forecasting firms, such as Nielsen, Statista, or McKinsey, regularly produce white papers that anyone can access free of charge. I strongly advise you to find out what consulting firms exist for your target market. They can provide you with some fascinating resources!
Several digital players also share interesting publications on a range of sectors. In addition, Facebook has developed Facebook IQ, a platform dedicated to studying digital trends and forecasting.
When I have compiled enough information and it starts to look repetitive, I carry out an initial selection process by writing the useful data into a PESTEL and several SWOTs. But rest assured: everyone has their own method!
The PESTEL Method
The SWOT Matrix
Sector Analysis
Your sector is well defined. Your challenge now is to understand it better from the inside and in detail. For example, is there a level of seasonality? What queries are used in search engines? Which communication channels should be prioritized?
Google provides an interesting tool to study your sector, Google Trends. In addition, the Think with Google website will also give you a lot of information about developments in your sector as well as inspiration for your campaign.
User Research
The next phase, which is equally important, brings you closer to your user and helps you to keep them in mind at all times. The goal is to understand your user, to know them as if they were your best friend. At the end of this phase, you will know all about their life, fears, strengths, passions, daily life and even the name of their first crush.
I already know my target, I've done market research, and I know the sector well. What more can I do to get to know my user?
Start by talking to them! All the research in the world will never be as good as chatting over a coffee with a real human.
Let's say you are developing an on-demand television project. Your first impulse might be to rush directly into developing programming, the movies you'll broadcast, the partnerships you'll make... Then you launch your platform after several months of hard work, convinced that success will come on the first day. Unfortunately, your product isn’t appealing and doesn’t generate sales. 😓
Your product isn’t finding an audience, and you don't understand why. You’ve done everything to make the platform work, in you view. The movies playing are great, and the user experience is smooth. And yet...
The answer is simple: You created your platform imagining yourself as the user. But your customer is very different from you. They may have entirely opposite needs from you, and not understanding this from the beginning can cause big problems down the line.
Adopting a user-centric approach is very difficult because we tend to think: "If I like it, my client will like it." Not at all! Your job is not to develop a product you like, but to understand your user so you can develop a service that meets their needs.
So write down a few questions on a piece of paper and get started! I suggest you go to your local coffee shop and buy a coffee for anyone in your target audience.
Once you feel like you're getting the same information over and over again, you're ready for the next step!
Creation of One or More Persona(s)
A persona is your users’ identikit. You can synthesize all the data you’ve collected so far to bring it to life!
A persona has a name, age, tastes, problems, history—like a character in a novel.
The goal of this phase is to understand how your product meets the needs of your persona. What narrative affects them? What words? What features?
Here is a non-exhaustive framework for establishing your persona:
First name, last name, gender, photo
Age
Familial status (single, married, children, etc.)
Professional situation
Annual income and type of employment (permanent contract, etc.)
Goals: what are their goals in life?
Challenges: what are their current problems?
Our answer to their worries
Verbatims (direct user quotes)
Barriers to them using our solution
Our message
Elevator pitch: our solution in one sentence!
Check out my first persona, Ms. Holly Wood, here.
Once you have determined your persona, find out the different touchpoints you could have, i.e., the places (physical or online) where you can establish a relationship with your target.
Needless to say, one of those touchpoints will be Facebook, or we might as well stop this course right now! 😉
Over to You!
Start your research and fill in a PESTEL and a SWOT templates with your initial findings. Then, do a quick study of the sector and create your first persona! This last step is crucial for the rest of this course, so take your time.
Let's Recap!
Creating a Facebook ad campaign that meets your goals will require you to do some careful marketing research:
Conduct market research using methods such as PESTEL or SWOT.
Analyze your sector as much as possible using tools like Google Trends or Facebook IQ.
Get to know your ideal customer inside out by creating a persona.
Have you got your persona? Let’s see how to find the perfect audience that matches them in the next chapter.
