What happens when the all-important marketing persona profile information and the elusive customer lifetime value data comes together? I am not really sure exactly, however, I believe the combined data may create a profile that delivers profitable results.
I know this isn't really big data, but the combination of these two critical aspects of business and marketing could deliver big results if businesses figure out how to harness the possibilities.
As marketers, we are trained create marketing content that helps attract the prospective customer. We go the extra mile to understand their motivations, pain points, questions, what customer touch points are effective and many other attributes that help create more effective marketing. We call this prospective customer a "persona." As the brand, we position our entire marketing and advertising based on how we define them and their potential interaction with our marketing initiatives. It's a well-documented approach, proven to ensure your marketing content is crafted to reach the audience you need. It's all part of content marketing which does a lot more informing and educating than selling.
Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way. - Content Marketing Institute
I have to admit, I am a content marketer at heart and have been for years. I completely drink it up and so does my marketing team. Here's a question I have been pondering lately. Is content marketing really the best method and criteria to base our entire marketing strategy? Additionally, are marketers receiving maximum value by exclusively looking at just their personas? - Hmm. I know, this sounds like a slap in the face to all my peers. Trust me, it's not. I am just trying to think a bit deeper, wider and more introspectively.
What About Value?
We already know the value of personas, but let's twist our thinking for a moment and look at them from a new perspective. Instead of just looking at persona attributes as we discussed earlier, maybe we should look at the potential value they bring to our business. The value I am referring to is not in the form of clicks-throughs, blog comments, social posts, KPIs, engagement or even video views.
The value I think that is most important is how much revenue personas that actually translate into customers contribute to the business.
100% of marketing cannot be attributed to the bottom line. Is there another way? Maybe Customer Lifetime Value (CVL) needs more attention. What exactly is it anyway?
CLV is the total worth of a customer to a business over the entirety of their relationship. - eConsultancy
If marketing departments can track the customer lifetime value (CLV) and then cross-reference that same customer data with our persona profiles we use for marketing, we may be able to discern what type of customers are most important to our business.
When personas and CLV are tracked together, I believe the true persona profiles that are most profitable for the company will be identified. - YourBrandExposed
At that point, your marketing will be more effective as a result of knowing the combined persona/CLV data. As a marketer, I always want to know who is most likely going to be a paying customer. By combining these two powerful components of business we aren't taking an educated guess, we are using data to substantiate our marketing strategy.