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Before content, think customers!

Before content, think customers!
9.3
So we were launching mobile ordering payment in the US. Mobile ordering payment , big deal for us. Not such a big deal for people out there because they are used to the thing. It’s not like groundbreaking innovation from Burger King. We knew that, even when you give a product to people, they don’t come. So how to make it relevant? How to make people talk about it, since I don’t have budget to advertise on TV and all that, the fact that they’re launching a mobile in payment. So this brief was, basically, make mobile order and payment relevant to people. And this is what we did. Burger King wants you to come here. Yes, to McDonald’s.
54.5
Burger King is trolling its fast food rival. - with a promotion available through the Burger King mobile app. Yeah, but there is a small catch. So I saw is Burger King commercial, where you could - - get a Whopper for a penny. Only if you open the app while you’re at McDonald’s. That doesn’t even make sense. You have to go to McDonald’s for a Whopper? Whopper? Use Burger King’s BK App, then be within 600 feet of a McDonald’s restaurant. Burger King geofenced over 14,000 - -14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US. Unbelievable. So I parked my news car about 100 feet from my McDonald’s. I feel weird. I’m at McDonald’s getting a coupon for a Burger King.
98.9
I almost feel like I’m stealing. Let’s go for the unlock. You unlocked the Whopper detour. This is a really cool promo, guys. How fun is this? [LAUGHS]
117.8
That’s crazy.
122.4
Nice. That’s so horrible. [LAUGHS] That’s funny.
135.1
It’s a brilliant promotion. Having a little fun.
146
Can you do a Whopper Jr? They probably can make that. It wouldn’t be as good as Burger King would, to be honest with you. [CHA-CHING]
161.6
OK, where’s the Burger King? Like four blocks to your left. [LAUGHTER] So this was a really fun one to do. And to me, it, from the companies I worked on, is probably the best example I can think of in terms of creativity being a competitive advantage because creativity has the power of bending logic. If I went to you and said, hey, I’ll give you two options. Option A, you download the app, you’ll get a free Whopper. Option B, you download the app. You put your credit card information. You drive to a McDonald’s. You order a Whopper from there for 1 cent, which will go on your credit card. Then have to drive back to Burger King.
199.1
And then pick up your Whopper. Which one do you think people are going to do? People don’t even know we did option A because no one cares. In our case, we know our fan. We know they are like willing to do things if it’s kind of funny, if they can having bragging rights that they did it, or be the first one to share with their friends that they did it. And that’s why I just think it took off. So just to wrap it up because my battery is about to die and because I’m already over time, these are the five things. Understand your brand. Especially divides in personality are really important because brands behave like people.
238.1
And it’s important that you defined that very clearly and in not plain vanilla way. Create a great brief. If you’re a client, force yourself to write a one line brief with one thing. You can write the whole shebang to share with your team and leave plenty. But force yourself to write the one line that’s inspiring and the creative chain will keep thinking about it even when they are having a shower or preparing dinner because that’s most likely when the good ideas will come up. Let the idea grow. Trust uncertainty. Remember that you have to defend the baby lion because it’s very easy to kill.
272.6
Biggest reason to not taking any risk, remember it’s a we, Burger King, for none, I’m telling you, I’m always afraid, I’m always scared, even though we already have like a good track record of doing cool stuff. We are always afraid. And the trick is not to be fearless, but you do even when you are afraid. And final one, one team, which has to do with the relationship that you have with your creative partners - I mean, if you want you do things different, you need to be together because there’ll be lots of people against you, guys. So you need to stick together as a team. It doesn’t mean that we don’t argue and we don’t fight. We do fight.
303.6
We do argue. But we do that behind closed doors. And when we opened the door, we are like a couple and in the good sense. And the second one is one team with your own company. A lot of the success of the things you do comes from the fact that, when we do things we launch in 40 countries at the same time. So it’s like a nuclear bomb that we throw in the market. If it’s just one market, it would be trickier for the thing to gain scale. Of course, we did more things. But these were the, I think.
336.2
top five things that helped us change the trajectory of the brand and do more work that, I think, we are proud of and that the industry values. That’s all I had for you, guys. Thanks for your time. Hope you enjoy. Thank you. Thank you.

When considering what type of content marketing might work for you, there are two things to consider here: what makes sense for your customers and what makes sense for your own brand.

The video above shows how Burger King thinks about its customers and its brand. Its brand is cheeky, irreverent and bold. It’s not a strategy that would work for every brand but it certainly appeals to Burger King customers.

Let’s start with an exercise to look at what works for customers. The most important thing is to understand who your customers are, so that you can work out where to reach them. One good way to think about customers is to create marketing personas.

Marketing personas are semi-fictional representations of your target customers based on data and research. The idea is that these personas represent the people you want to use your product.

The value of personas is that they help you:

  • Understand these buyers and where you might reach them
  • Work out what type of messages or content you need for these people
  • Appreciate the customer as a full person and what may influence their behaviour

The goal here is to sketch out some customer personas and put together profiles of people in your customer base as if they’re real. We cover creating personas and segmentation in detail in our other FutureLearn courses ‘Marketing Strategy’ and ‘Brand Strategy’.

But when thinking about content marketing specifically, it’s important that your personas cover the media choices, online behaviour and interests of your customers.

Areas you may cover in your persona include:

  • Background (basic details about the person, age/gender)
  • Job (what kind of job might this person do?)
  • Income (how much money does this person have to spend?)
  • Information sources (where does this person find their information? TV? Social media? Newspapers?)
  • Goals (what is this person trying to accomplish)
  • Challenges or pain points (what issues does this person have?)
  • Values (are there things that are important to this person?)
  • Objections (what are things this person might have against buying your product or service?)
  • Role in purchasing (are they the end buyer or do they just influence the decision)?
  • Marketing message (What appeals to this person? Content marketing? Digital marketing? TV?)

Let’s give you a couple of examples of how you can think about personas. You have a new anti-ageing cosmetics brand. It uses natural ingredients but you’re planning to sell it at a fairly low price point so it’s affordable for lots of people. You think that a content marketing campaign would be a good way to reach people and tell them about the anti-ageing and natural benefits of the make-up.

Your persona work might sketch out a person like Julia, who is 55, who loves getting value for money. She doesn’t just want cheap things but she loves to feel like she has got a bargain. She has a certain amount of disposable income but is a savvy shopper. She isn’t convinced by straightforward advertising; she likes her products to be recommended by trusted media outlets. She will most often buy when there is a discount available. Julia is your primary persona; most of your customers will be similar to Julia.

A secondary persona might be Ari. She is 32 and has just noticed some fine lines. She isn’t super focused on ageing due to her age, but she wants to upgrade from her usual cream. She isn’t going to spend a large amount of money as anti-ageing isn’t a huge concern, but she is very interested in natural products so this would attract her. Ari doesn’t really watch TV except Netflix to binge watch series but uses a lot of social media. She gets product recommendations from Instagram and watches make up tutorials on YouTube.

Most businesses have some core, targeted customer personas – like Julia above – but you may also have some that are people who may also buy your product, even if they’re not the core group, like Ari.

If you aren’t sure who your customers might be, this is a great time to do research. Market research is a major discipline in its own right but even an online survey or phoning customers can help you understand them better if you don’t have access to anything more detailed. Even observing the type of people commenting on similar content is a help here.You need to put all those insights into action.

Have you created personas before? Any tips for other learners? Share them if so.

This article is from the free online

Content Marketing Strategy with Advertising Week

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FutureLearn - Learning For Life

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