Seven weeks of roundups already. STB is only four months old and it’s been quite the journey. Three people, three different backgrounds, three unique perspectives. We’re a diverse team with a wide range of views. We have one thing in common: generating mad growth for us, and our clients.

The roundup is where we bring those views together to show you what we’re liking and learning from. There’s a load of content out there to choose between: start here, and you’ll be on a good path.

Podcast fan? We are. Cut the Crap is a favourite of ours. It’s designed for people who don’t have time to read all the books they wish they could, but want the “golden nuggets” from the world’s brightest business minds.

What’s fascinating is that you see the podcast develop and pivot as you progress through it. It’s a great look into challenging yourself to always give your audience the best. We’d suggest starting with ‘The Upside of your Darkside’.

Writing for eCommerce can seem like an utter pain in the ass. There is so much advice out there for SaaS and tech companies. eCommerce has been discarded like the unfashionable weirdo.

Ecommerce Writing: 7 Killer Steps to Ranking Content Like a Boss will show you how to write eCommerce content like the pros.

Facebook Reactions. We don’t need to tell you what they are. They’ve been around for a while and you’re not here to learn how to Like your best friend’s memes.

You’ve even used the pride react (because it’s awesome). What you want to know is how reactions impact the feed. We love Hootsuite, but skip to the last section of this blog. You don’t need the rest.

And finally, straight out of the innovation files: I promise you this isn’t out of Silicon Valley. Well, it is. But not the Hooli/Pied Piper/Eric Bachman Silicon Valley that you’d expect.

This very innovative tech company has accidentally invented the bus. The directions they provide are particularly amazing.

It’s not unimaginable that there would be people in Silicon Valley that would actually need introducing to the concept of a bus. All jokes aside, this service might just work.

Happy Friday, everyone. Here’s to stopping the bullshit.

Quick sidenote: huge respect to Travis Kalanick. You’ll be back. You’ve built a team that’ll do what’s right, despite bumps along the way.

As Margaret Ann-Seger said: “Uber is not perfect. But the positive impact you’ve had on this company, and the world, is truly inspirational. Thanks to the OG Builder.”

Subscribe now to get more curated, bullshit-stopping content.

☞ If you liked this, hit that ♥︎. Hard.

Originally published at www.stbcollaborations.com.

We have some bad news for you: you can’t directly target Facebook Groups.

This is a real missed opportunity, both for us and for Facebook. It’s obvious to me, you, the woman next to you, her dog, and the dog’s brother’s brother, that Facebook Group advertising is a huge opportunity.

Groups are a strong indicator about a person. Joining a group is a high-intent action that signals something about you. It’s a far more powerful indicator of you as a person than, say, liking a page.

According to reports, Facebook is testing group targeting features. “We have started to test delivering ads to people in Facebook Groups, and will be evaluating the response before determining how we will move forward,” Facebook said in October. We haven’t seen much progress.

This means that Facebook group administrators have a huge opportunity on their hands. Most of the time those admins aren’t even aware of the size of the key they hold.

Right now, admins are the only way to ‘legitimately’ get your offer to members of a group. Contact the admin, pay for access. This is fine, but this method relies far too heavily on finding an awesome group administrator. It’s all good when you do (thanks Carl and Vic Deals, hope that Uber deal’s going strong). But falls flat when you don’t.

So while we’re waiting for Facebook to make group targeting possible, STB have another approach. It’s an inbound play where the aim is to have the group members come to you, and we’re going to share it with you right now. Golden step by golden step.

Here we go:

Step One: What does the Group Want?

Start by asking yourself what the group wants. This is core to the method. This method won’t work for you if you don’t figure out what your potential target group wants. How do we do this? We develop mini user personas to build a picture of the typical group member. You don’t have to go as deep as we do when we develop our Buyer Personas. You simply want to know what the Group member’s common pain points and desires are.

Look at conversations, check out comments. Do some light browsing of a few member’s Facebook profiles (if you’re friends). Find themes, and pick a problem you’d like to solve for your group.

For the sake of an example, let’s imagine we’re a dog toy retailer, targeting a Facebook Group called ‘I Love Dogs’.

From creating mini-personas, we can see that training is a common issue. People talk about this a lot. They offer support to each other. Post videos. Laugh. Cry. Get frustrated. All the signs of a great problem to solve.

Let’s aim to create a very specific eBook, titled ‘7 Steps for Getting Fido to Roll Over’.

Step Two: Work Backwards

Right, so you know your group and have your offer planned. From here, it’s fairly smooth.

Start engaging with the group. Ask questions that will build conversation relating to your eventual offer. For us, this would be things like:

• “What have people done to get their dog to roll over? Any tips?!”
• “Been trying to train Fido to do new tricks lately. Going super well. Anyone else?”
• Etc.

Engage, engage, record, engage, engage. Take notes throughout this process. Use the information that people are sharing with you to make your offer stronger.

Important: record everyone who is posting comments on your questions. These people are your engagers and will be super useful to you when it comes time to post your offer. The bigger the group, the MORE IMPORTANT these engagers are. More on this later.

Step Three: Create your offer

Write your eBook. Set up a landing page to offer it for download. Crucial step: make sure to set up audience capturing pixels on your page. Ensure you name the audience appropriately. We normally go with a combination of date and group name.

Use a separate landing page and pixel for each group where you run this plan. This helps you to keep your audiences specific and valuable.

Step Four: Promote your offer

Post your eBook to the group. Make the post fit the style of the group. Don’t be salesy. You’re not actually selling anything. Be super grateful for what the group has given you and make this about giving something back. And here’s where those engagers come into play.

Alert your engagers to your eBook. Don’t tag everyone in one horrific name dump. Try to message them, if you can, or tag them in a comment that tells them why you’re letting them know about this. For example: “@John Ringo I thought you might like this after our chat about getting dogs to roll over. Let me know what you think!”

One thing you shouldn’t do:

DO NOT ask for their email address as part of the download process. Be cool. Give these people this eBook for free. By reducing the friction you increase the chance that they’ll share the book with their friends. It will, after all, be a ringing endorsement for your dog toy sales business.

Step Five: Profit from your (and someone else’s) hard work

You now have a steady stream of audience growth. Thanks to your specific targeting methodology, you know they’re the people you want. Use them. Test them. Consider expanding your options with lookalike audiences, or other tricks and tools.

The Takeaway

You have to be clever to get benefit from Facebook Groups that aren’t yours. While this may sound like a tactic that borders on exploiting someone else’s group, it’s nothing more than this: Engage, provide value, and profit.

Here’s to stopping the bullshit.

☞ If you want to get my marketing articles via email, subscribe here.

☞ Hit that ♥︎ hard if you found value in my writing!

Originally published at www.stbcollaborations.com.

The Step by Step Guide to Targeting Facebook Groups was originally published in Marketing And Growth Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

THE UNIVERSITY OF USER PERSONA DEVELOPMENT

Reading time: 6 minutes.

Regardless of where my marketing and growth career has taken me, and no matter where it takes me next, one thing remains true. You have to know who you’re marketing to.

It’s remarkable how often people overlook this. In STB’s experience we’ve found that this fundamental, basic step isn’t overlooked because it’s too hard. But rather, because it’s almost too easy. We have a tendency, whether we’re fresh-faced or weathered from experience, to skip the basics. We assume we’re good enough to start at step three.

This is often true. We skip the working in math without making mistakes. We rely on habit to the point where we have no conscious memory of driving to the office. When’s the last time you consciously thought about brushing your teeth? Our brains great at relying on habit to reduce the load of less menial tasks. Until it comes to marketing, sales, and growth.

Designers and developers have nailed personas. It’s part of their process. As Growth professionals, we need to catch up. STB believes that there’s a key difference between marketers and growth professionals. The latter have a thorough understanding of who they’re selling to. The former have target markets.

Course pre-requisite: Getting into the Growth Mindset

Digital Marketing has reached a point where it’s all about beating a system. There’s no denying that this can return results. But they’re short lived. Networks are becoming more intelligent and consumers more savvy.

Are you trying to gain more eyeballs, optimise your clickthrough rates, and reach an industry-standard conversion rate? If you’re shooting for average then, congratulations, your job is done and you can stop reading.

If you’re still here, then let’s take this back to basics and get into the Growth Mindset. Take a good look at your product or service and start thinking through these questions:

• Who is your customer?
• Where do people who are like your customer tend to gather, whether online or off?
• How can you connect with these people in those places, without coming across as spammy?

Now you’re in the mindset that all great growth people share. It’s User Persona time.

User Personas 101: Getting in Your Target’s Head

Before we go any further let’s give your customer a name. For the sake of our exercise we’re going to do this for you. Ready? Your customer’s name is Jessica.

To help demonstrate this, let’s also define a product. In this example, you’re selling high-end headphones. Congratulations: you’re in business. Let’s figure out how to make Jessica care about your audiophile-worthy headphones.

As we said earlier, it’s time to define three things: who, where and how.

Who

Ok so you have a bunch of premium headphones on your hands. They’re not for everyone. Who appreciates headphones enough to want to spend over $300 on a pair? Jessica. That’s who.

Jessica has always been into the finer things in life. She’s not pretentious, but definitely appreciates attention to detail and nice touches. This isn’t limited to her taste in headphones. This attitude is something that she applies to everything she cares about. We’re not saying she’s rich, but she works hard to pay a little extra for the things she values.

Where

Let’s dig into Jessica’s habits to find out where we should be communicating with her.

• What’s a day in Jessica’s life like?

She works an office job, but nothing too traditional. She’s more likely to be in an advertising or publishing firm because she enjoys the creativity. Jessica doesn’t call herself a hipster (some of her friends do) but has a distinct, toned down style. Most of her friends are like her.

• What kind of music is she into? What apps does she use?

Jessica avoids describing herself as a fan of any one genre, preferring to listen to a broad range of styles. She’s an iPhone user and consumes music primarily through Spotify. She loves ‘Discover Weekly’. She’s also an avid Youtube viewer, both for music and other forms of entertainment

• What are her consumption habits like? Where does she turn for information?

Jessica is advanced enough in her career to have decent purchasing power. She’s just on either side of 30 and trusts her friends recommendations for fashion and gear. She uses the same social media platforms as most people her age. She keeps her networks tight preferring to connect only with friends. She follows a select few brands and publishers, the ones she respects.

• When did Jessica last buy headphones? Why?

Jessica hasn’t bought headphones for at least a year. The last time she bought headphones was to upgrade to a pair that were more suitable for travelling. Travelling is something she’s been doing more of, both professionally and personally.

How

This is the million dollar question. You now have a decent picture of your customer, Jessica, written down. This is where we’ll leave our headphones example behind.

Whatever your Jessica looks like and wherever her and her friends hangout, you need to study that channel and work out how to engage there in a natural way.

It’s helpful at this point to not forget your inner Don Draper. Marketing has become about analytics and optimisation, but creative copy and effective strategy still wins.

User Personas 201: You thought you were done?

As much as fun as inventing Jessica was, 101 was all about getting into the right mindset. Creating initial marketing personas will help you as you launch or grow from an early stage. Yet, that initial persona is nothing but an imagination. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we’re still human. Your first user persona is probably idealised. It might be a bit like you, and designed from the inside out, rather from the outside in.

You will need to refine your Jessicas and Johns as your business starts to gather real analytics and insight based on traffic, content consumption, and purchase behaviour.

Refining your User Personas means that you can start tailoring content and marketing to suit a more accurate representation of the people who buy your product.

There are two key ways to do this, whether you’re early-stage or mature:

WEBSITE AND CONVERSION DATA

Real, quantifiable data about your customers through website and connected information. This is a blog series in and of itself.

TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS/LEADS

You know what’s better than imagining what Jessica or John are like? Asking them. How? Exactly like this. Send them this email:

“Hi Jessica

It’s Steffen from STB Collaborations here. Apologies for invading your inbox. I don’t expect you to believe this, but this isn’t a mass email. I’ve sent this specifically to you.

Why? I’m emailing to ask you a massive favour. I’m trying to learn how to better serve our current customers and how to effectively reach potential new customers.

It would mean a lot to me and the team if you’d have a short chat with me to discuss your STB experience so far. All I need is 15 minutes and I would appreciate it. Let me know if you’re up for it.

Thanks,

Steffen”

Then, when they say reply saying yes (and in our experience >30% do) set up a video call and jam with them. Be respectful and don’t hide your intentions. No bullshit.

User Personas 301: Segmentation

OK, so now you have your first target market user persona which you’ve started refining based on real-customer data and both qualitative (chats) and quantitative (tracking) methods. There’s only one more step to the initial User Persona puzzle.

While in the refining process (this process doesn’t have an end date) you will quickly notice that it would be impossible, and counterintuitive, to try to represent all your customers with one persona. Jessica isn’t for everyone.

You will need multiple buyer personas to represent the different customer segments that your business serves. All that means is adding a John to the mix. Maybe an Alicia. A word of warning, though: the temptation is to create vast arrays of user personas from the start. The danger then is that it makes your growth efforts unwieldy and tough to scale or manage.

This is because every persona demands its own communications approach. They like different blogs. They respond to different types of email subject lines. They want to be contacted at different times or frequencies. For a small team, this can completely fuck up your efforts. You have two options at that point:

1. Email hey@stbcollaborations.com and ask for help
2. Take a sensible, data-driven, approach to segmentation and persona creation

If, through testing different campaigns and strategies, you start to notice the signs of two very distinct groups that are no longer responding well to the ‘same-same’ treatment, analyse the data and split them into two personas. Be careful: as with any breakup or divorce, this does make your job more complicated. Ultimately, though, it’s this breakup that makes your tactics resonate more strongly and generate a higher return.

The Takeaway: This is one tool in your kit that will generate real short and long term benefits. User personas give you a real representation of your audience. They also guide marketing efforts. Resist the temptation to run rampant with persona population growth. Remember the mindset and take a rational, data-backed approach to developing the User Personas for your business.

If you want the STB team working on your User Personas like, now, then email hey@stbcollaborations and we’ll get after it. Together. No bullshit.

☞ If you want to get my marketing articles via email, subscribe here.

☞ Hit that ♥︎ hard if you found value in my writing!

Originally published at www.stbcollaborations.com.

The value of user personas — it’s not just tech was originally published in Marketing And Growth Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.