Who is Your Digital Consumer?
The biggest challenge in the digital world is the perception that consumer engagement has taken place!
A lot of companies make the mistake in defining metrics for their internal or external digital consumers before they have already grasped who their Digital Consumer is. We all know that the Digital Consumer and workforce is the next evolution of our current consumers and knowledge workers, however they vary in their degree of digitally literacy, data-driven mentality, & self-development. This is where the persona comes in handy.
The opportunity comes when you know the persona you are targeting, you put the right metrics you want to measure and this will ensure you reach much higher level of success in engaging with the Digital Consumers, irrespective if that is in the open market or internal employees.
In the previous blog, I have shared with you the "Digital Consumer" definition.
I would like now to uncover who our future Digital Consumer can be, Personas. Based on my research and experience, we, as individual Digital Consumers, can be segmented into 4 Personas:
1- Digital Prophet
Yes there are those consumers who believe they either had the idea for your digital product or they were the influence to make it exist. They might have their own digital products. They believe their use of your digital product makes or breaks it. They will use your product only if they can benefit from it. However, they are the most connected & influential digital consumers and their followers will follow their lead.
2- Digital Preacher
These are the consumers who are the early adopters, the mavericks, the champions for digital technology and products. They see digital products as replacement for unwanted physical activities and tasks and firmly believe in its value and benefit to their lives and/or their company. If they believe in your digital product, they simply take it upon themselves to use it, promote it, and feedback on improvement suggestions!
3- Digital Believer
These are the consumers who believe in the digital products they use. They are digital savvy and feel at ease in using your digital products but some training might be required. However, they will only use the digital products if they offer same or better quality than non-digital products.
4- Digital Atheist
These are the consumers that believe digital is only there for necessity and will only use it if there is no other non-digital product available. They will resist and find excuses why they don't need, want or can't use it.
By now, I already hear some of you saying what about demographics, geography and other criteria, have you missed those?
And I say, of course not! The above 4 personas are applicable irrespective of certain demography, geography or culture.
In fact, the same person can be a different persona in his personal and corporate life. I know a lot of Preachers in the personal lives that are either a believers or even atheists in their corporate lives. Sometimes it is caused by the status of the digital maturity in their corporate environment and others is simply they are 2 different personas between a private and corporate individual. What you can and should do of course is to add other criteria after you identified your digital consumers for a certain persona afterwards to allow you to enhance your analysis and marketing engagement. For example, if you identify that all your digital believers have a certain age range or certain country/culture, this will help you concise your digital marketing activities (a topic I will expand on in a future blog) and effectiveness.
In your next 100 days, try to identify or add to your user segmentation the above personas and you can start increasing your targeting aims in relation to marketing, selling, communicating and of course engagement. I will in future blogs tackle each area in more details so hopefully it allows you to build a strategy to engage with the digital consumer.