Rosie Guest is the Chief Marketing Officer and Communications Officer at global financial services provider Apex Group.
Personas have been all the rage for quite some years now. But I must admit, I’ve never fully bought into the concept of creating an avatar and giving it a name and a binary set of interests in an attempt to personalize marketing messaging. I just don’t think people are that simple, and it’s always felt a bit gimmicky—although I appreciate the intent. Either way, any marketer who is still chasing personas today, in my opinion, is wasting their time—the algorithm and LLM already know who’s buying.
In a world of fluid identities and real-time data, personas are obsolete. B2B is no different from B2C in the sense that we are marketing or selling to individuals. Those individuals are humans, with their own past experiences, preferences, prejudices and personalities—and all of those things impact the way they receive and interpret information, and their propensity to buy at any time. Rigid personas flatten complexity and miss nuances, and when overused, potentially even alienate prospects and limit revenue opportunities.
Lead With Data, Not Demographics
Never mind the learning ability of AI, even algorithms know us better than we know ourselves sometimes. Take social media, for example: They’ve now long been using behavioral data to target dynamically and doing it so successfully that we are all addicted to the small computers we carry around with us. It’s not actually the phone we’re addicted to—it’s the marketing!
The rise of machine learning and AI means marketers no longer need to guess. Does that mean we will get lazy and understand our customers less? Or does it just highlight that we never really understood them properly in the first place, because people just aren’t that simple and we haven’t had the ability to digest that level of complexity on a one-to-many basis until now—“Sophie, 34, loves yoga and oat milk.” … I think we’re all a bit more interesting and complex than that.
I’ve always preferred to drive campaigns with data, not demographics—and with the tools we have available today, we can do that with precise accuracy at a very personal level. Of course, when the power of what we now see as simple algorithms (such as Google retargeting campaigns) came to the forefront, we became aware of how marketers were using our data to target us based on our preferences. “Big brother” fear took hold, and we saw a plethora of regulations (quite rightly) released to protect our rights to our digital fingerprints. But if used ethically, perhaps it’s not all that bad?
Targeting With Empathy
How about a hybrid approach—data-driven targeting with human empathy? That’s where strategic marketing and tech innovation come together and make a perfect blend to create something that is really powerful. AI gives us increasing ability to act more quickly and more personally—so we don’t need personas, but we do need empathy.
The most recent conference I was at showed some statistic about different buying behaviors across older and younger generations. The statistics were a bit of a stretch, and I appreciated the honesty of one of the panelists who challenged the need to box people by age, quoting the research that found people who eat nuts or watch true crime documentaries have more in common than people within a single generational cohort.
The world is moving at an ever-increasing pace. We are living in a volatile era, and there is volatility in marketing too—it’s impossible to predict how much AI is going to change our industry and our roles, and that too is true for how technology as a whole changes societies. I think the focus for marketers as we navigate this unpredictable time is to combine hyper-personalized digital experiences with high-touch, in-person experiences, all of which focus on getting closer to the individual.
Final Thoughts
In the post-pandemic era of “AI slop,” in-person events are on the rise again! People are craving personal interaction, so we have an opportunity to shift gears as a function to a hybrid approach. Let’s move away from making assumptions and adapt to how people want to interact with brands today. That means a shift away from target audience and persona, to a focus on targeting with human empathy and providing a brand journey that aligns with the context in which we live today.
Your audience isn’t who they were yesterday—and neither are you.
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