Part 2: Tina Brown and The Daily Beast Understand the Importance of Buyer Personas in Online Strategy

David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave, talks extensively about defining, identifying, and personally talking with your target buyer personas.  Understanding your buyer personas guides and informs the choices you'll make in executing your online marketing strategy.

I don't know if Tina Brown or members of The Daily Beast team follow or study David's work, but it's clear they understand their audience's time constraints, desire for entertaining engagement, and digital channel preferences (i.e., articles less than 900 words, video mashups, smartphone viewing, etc.).

If someone as high-profile and accomplished as Tina Brown personally meets and interacts with her audience, perhaps we should too (and that's regardless of whether our organizational focus is B2B or B2C).

Understanding Your Audience Starts with Personally Meeting Them

When Brown was the Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair, she invested significant time and energy in high-profile marketing events such as the A-List Only Vanity Fair Oscar Parties.  These annual events successfully generated and powered the buzz and upscale image of Vanity Fair.

In the New Media world, Brown also attends and participates in events that enable her to directly interact with important buyer personas to The Daily Beast.  To her credit, she's personally meeting and conversing with key segments of her target audience.

This year, Brown attended a Chicago conference targeted to women bloggers.  She personally interacted with several of the 5,000+ attendees and learned firsthand the daily issues influence their blogs (i.e., child-rearing, husbands, women's health issues, empty nesting, etc.).  She said the personal experience from attending the conference helped her better understand:

* "Who these people really are"
* The audience for female-focused content was bigger than originally dictated by conventional wisdom
* The audience's needs, desires, and concerns so The Daily Beast can credibly earn "inbound links" from these female bloggers

"Read This, Skip That" and "The Daily Cheat Sheet" Focus the Attention of a Busy, Overwhelmed Audience

The " Read This, Skip That" editorial mantra is driven by the fact that The Daily Beast's upscale and well-educated audience is already "information-overwhelmed."  To Brown, focusing the audience's attention is a significant challenge.  If you want to successfully compete in an online world, focusing the audience's attention is critical.

The Cheat Sheet quickly and simply displays The Daily Beast's viewpoint on what is the day's essential reading.  Brown and her team know they're competing for our fleeting time and attention.  During the Q&A session, Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs.com, highlighted this clever curation strategy of The Top 10 Stories.  Brown acknowledged how this curation strategy "makes people's lives easier" versus "adding to the existing noise."

In addition, Brown cited their weekly, Sunday morning video mashups as another time-saving feature for her audience.  These mashups summarize the week's events in mainstream news, entertainment, and politics.  It's a convenient and efficient option for consuming news highlights so the audience member can spend more time enjoying other weekend activities after a long workweek (i.e., time with family and friends or a round of golf).

 

Comments

[David Meerman Scott]

Wow - this is really cool. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. David

[Tony Faustino]

@David - Thank you so much for reading and commenting on my post. You are a generous online mentor to me and so many other bloggers! My sincere thanks for your time and encouragement.