Step two is how to get started. And there's a lot of information here. So I'm gonna break this down into several sub topics for us to explore. But basically step through is about gathering your resources. It's about getting started, it's about getting enough knowledge to be able to make a hypothesis that's based in reality that's based in some credible thought that will help you guide and align your organization. So before we dive into this, let's let me just state upfront that there is no perfect, we live in a world that is constantly evolving.

And even if you do $100,000 worth of marketing research, that research is only relevant for a specific point in time, and then the world moves on. So you don't want to suffer from analysis paralysis. You don't want to worry about a variety of things too much because we're going to miss the marketing opportunity. So as a rule of thumb, I like to shoot for 75% accuracy. And that's an arbitrary number. But basically, it's to get good enough that will help you align and make the best business decisions you can today.

And then as you get some feedback on your marketing programs, you'll make adjustments, and you'll adjust and move forward every day. This is an ongoing activity, not just a one time do it, and you're done for the year. So with that in mind, let's talk about how to get started. The first step I want to share with you is something I call digging through your files. And it's a whole lot easier to look through any persona of work you might have already done in the past and leverage it. chances are there's been some good thought that's gone into it probably needs some tuning, but why not start with some resources or some thought that you already have that you can build on and you can do this either through going through paper files, or searching through your CRM system.

Salesforce.com using any data you've captured in Marketo, any resources you have that's available to you don't start from scratch if you don't have to go through the files and build on what you've got. So a case in point, I recently worked with a company who wanted some help in building a persona, and they're in the financial services sector. And they had a change of control, a new senior executive came in delete the marketing team, and he asked for some help building the persona. So we joined up with them, and we started asking some questions about who their target was. And in that conversation of discovery, somebody came up and said, You know what, I think we did something a while back through the prior administration. Let me see what I can find.

And they dug through and they actually found some files that actually showed some really good thinking. Now it needed some slight updating, but I would say 90% of what they had already articulated and formulated in their own persona plan was still relevant. And this was huge because searching through the files and then verifying what they had saved them $10,000 and not having to invest time or money to repeat the exercise. So aim for the easiest place. First, check with your colleagues, check with others in other departments, whether it's marketing, sales, customer support, somebody might actually have some data, some knowledge, maybe even a prior template that you can build from. And it seems silly maybe to point this out, but it's the easiest opportunity to find that there may actually be some work that you haven't discovered yet.

So step number one, dig through some files, even if it's just five minutes might save you some time and some money. All right. Another idea is to ask a sales rep. So when you sit down to chat with the sales rep about what they think the What do you think the personas should be? But it's easy to focus on, you know, tell me about your last customer win. Tell me a little bit about the people you're selling to today.

And so I've listed out a small set of questions that can help you guide that interview that conversation with your sales rep. Tell me about your latest win. Who was the buyer? What problem were they trying to solve? And why did we win? These are four great, open ended questions that will invite your sales rep to open up and to express their opinion and to report on what their own personal experience has been. When they talk to clients and they sell your product.

This is an excellent way to get relevant real time information that will influence who your persona is, and what they should look like moving forward. Another idea is to spy on a competitor. Now some of you might be thinking, oh sign a competitor. We can't do that. Actually, you can consider how much information is in the public domain. Anything that is on the website.

Is open for your use and you should make use of it through your own analysis. So some of the ideas that I've written here reviewing a competitor website, compare analyst reviews, read your competitors press, analyze their client lists and case studies. Now, here's a case in point some years ago, I was doing work for one company, and they were interested to know in why they were losing business to a competitor. So I went to the competitors website. And God loved them. They had under their about page, they had their customer page, and they went so far as to not only list the many hundred of their customers by company name.

They also had a large majority of customer case studies, which shared not only what their interest was, but who the specific buyer was, by name and by title and all that information is now publicly available. sits on the web for public consumption. So we were able to make a short list of that and use that information to help guide who our persona should be, and what our messaging should be to help counteract some of the reasons that we're that we might have been at risk and some of the issues and interests these customers had when they signed up with the competitor. And this is all publicly available information. It's a guerilla marketing tactic that is open and you should take advantage of another idea, easy idea that doesn't cost any money is to actually search LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a lot of information on people and their profiles.

And this is a great resource that doesn't cost you anything except the time to actually do some investigation. So here's some specific tips. review a few customer profiles. So look up your customer buyers on LinkedIn and find out what they say about themselves about their responsibilities, about their interests, about their priorities. You'll get a sense not only through their career history, but how they frame their responsibilities about their current level of employment. What industries are they're in?

What are their responsibilities, and then look at what each of these have in common with each other. This will help you connect the dots between different customer segments segments that you're interested in pursuing. So LinkedIn isn't an automatic home run. It's but it is a source of easily accessible information that you can use to your advantage if you take the time to do some minimal investigation. Here's another idea. attend a conference or trade show and I'm sure many of you are doing this already.

But when you attend one of these rather than looking at your own responsibilities for showcasing your brand, you should also do a little bit of market investigation and research. So as you're sitting in on the keynotes, as you're perusing the tradeshow floor floor as you're gathering information on competitors, look who else is attending. These are in many cases, examples of possible personas for you ask the prospects, what they want, investigate their needs, and explore what the competition is doing and how they're interacting with these people, these potential customers, these prospects, this will help influence what your personas should look like. And this is all about conducting some real time market research. That doesn't cost any money because well, after all, you're at the show anyway. Here's another idea.

Interview an expert. Now these experts might be Industry analysts, they might be target companies, they might be in higher level education or academia. And here's some specific questions to guide you in your interview with them. Who has the problem problem that you're interested in solving? What are they looking for? How do they evaluate weigh their options, what's most important to them?

This is an opportunity for you to always be learning. And it's not about necessarily hiring an expert, but attending maybe an analyst event and asking some questions, having some sidebar conversation with other analysts or editors, and whoever you can find who's got an opinion that you value. Of course, if you've got within your budget, to conduct specific analyst reviews and analyst engagements, you by all means you should do that that's a great source of information. But there are also guerrilla tactics you can use to get some infrared information around the periphery of the marketing and the audience's that you tend to engage with anyway. And here's another idea, interview some friendly customers. Now, sometimes marketers might get a little nervous about how to conduct these interviews.

So I've suggested a set of questions. That might guide your discovery conversation with them questions like, tell me about the primary area of responsibility that you work in. Tell me about your goals and objectives. What problems are you trying to solve? What does the ideal solution look like? What factors play into your purchase decision?

And why did you decide to buy our product or service. And this is an opportunity for you to listen not only to the answers, but to the specific words that customers use to describe their own journey. In fact, your persona should reflect as many of the customers own words and phrases as possible, because using their words and phrases, makes it more meaningful to them. And it helps you establish a tighter bond and connection and empathy with the people that you want to target. And the easiest way to do that is to actually sit down and have a conversation with them. These are open ended questions, you're not there to defend position, you're not there to propose anything, you're just there to understand a little bit more about why the customer made their purchase decision about how they went through analyzing and evaluating options, and ultimately, why they chose you versus the competition.

Another idea, granted, this one's a little bit more advanced is to actually post a customer advisory board or an executive Roundtable. Now, these are specific types of customer engagements aimed at a specific subset of customers and decision makers within your customer base to have a strategic conversation. It's not about why they made a current purchase decision and it's not about looking at the past. It's about looking towards the future, about where they're making investments, about what decisions and priorities are going to be shaping their future and how you as a vendor can help them achieve their goals and objectives. So hosting an advisory board might be a good idea as well. And some topics worthy of exploring would be things like industry trends and drivers, their business priorities, issues they care about that you can help with joint opportunities and the ecosystem of relationships, what do they expect from you?

What do you expect from them, and looking for opportunities to learn from each other. And finally, in summary, I've created this little list to help identify which of these tactics might work work best, depending on if you're expanding a current market or if you're entering a new market. So for example, digging through files that actually works for both asking a sales rep spy, a competitor searching LinkedIn attending a conference, what do all of these things have in common is they don't have to cost a lot of money. In fact, you might be able to do those without costing any money at all, because it's making better use of resources you already have. Then a little bit further down. If you're We're going to interview experts if you're going to interview customers or host a customer advisory board.

Now those are a little bit more advanced topics and it is worthy for you to partner with an expert who can help you build a proper program execute. So your execution is world class and you don't embarrass yourself moving forward. Nevertheless, these are all excellent opportunities to gain information that will help you build a persona especially when you want to expand into new markets.