How Ansarada Uses Personas to Anchor Their Video Marketing

When producing any type of content, it’s always important to consider your audience.

But what if your audience includes disparate groups of people with different wants and needs? For some businesses, it’s practically impossible (and impractical) to craft a “one message fits all” video.

That’s why ansarada, a software company dedicated to making the processes behind mergers and acquisitions more efficient, created three different videos, each produced with a particular customer profile (or persona) in mind.

Before and after

Taz Bareham, chief marketing officer at ansarada, explained, “Our previous website had plenty of video content, but it was ’talking heads’, with different people at our company talking about our product and the benefits to the customer.” ansarada’s previous homepage (shown below) featured a prominent video and several links that led to more information about the product.

Together with Kwasi Studios, ansarada conducted a number of strategic workshops aimed at improving their marketing efforts. After collecting and analyzing lots of data on their customer base, they developed three personas, which served as pillars of their new front page.

Side note: maybe you’ve heard of personas, or maybe you’ve even helped develop personas for your own company, but just in case this term is unfamiliar to you, personas are archetypes that represent different segments of a company’s target audience. If you would like to read more about the processes behind creating personas or the benefits of developing these archetypes, Buffer’s Beginner’s Guide to Personas or Mike King’s in-depth post about personas on the Moz blog are good places to start.

Taz explained, “Ultimately, we came to the epiphany that people are more engaged when they can put themselves in the picture — when companies and brands frame their solution from the customer’s point of view, not from the company looking out.” With a clearer picture of their customer base, ansarada developed their new homepage:

“We came to the epiphany that people are more engaged when they can put themselves in the picture.”

While ansarada’s homepage still features a prominent explainer video, the links above the video represent an important shift in ansarada’s marketing tactics. By offering links for analysts, advisors, and sellers, ansarada’s new homepage allows visitors to self-identify and continue down paths crafted with their day-to-day experiences in mind.

Three personas: three videos

“We don’t have any one single audience,” Taz explains. “During a deal, there are a number of different parties involved. Rather than try to reflect each and every one, we decided to bring to life the three that would give the most holistic view of what was going on.” The three personas ansarada decided to focus on were:

• The analyst: involved with the day to day flow of information, setting up the data room, running reports, etc.
• The advisor: involved with running the deal and keeping his client informed and happy.
• The seller: the representative from the company or asset that is being sold.

Recognizing that the three different personas had different needs from their data rooms, ansarada’s marketing team decided to make three videos, each showcasing a unique set of needs.

“By championing these 3 characters on our website, we could show that we understood the differences, and we could highlight how ansarada could help each individual circumstance,” said Taz.

The following video demonstrates how ansarada’s software benefits an analyst:

By watching the analyst navigate his responsibilities with the help of ansarada’s virtual data room, we begin to get a sense of the product’s worth.

Woj Kwasi, founder of Kwasi Studios, commented, “It’s perfect if you play one of those roles because you can relate to the benefits of the software right away. It introduces something engaging and remarkable into a niche that’s not known for producing great online content.”

In addition to benefiting ansarada’s website, these videos are valuable tools for ansarada’s sales team. Taz explained how their salespeople often began client meetings with relevant videos. “The videos show that we ’get it’ very quickly by bringing to life what our clients are going through and how we can help,” she commented.

Customer-focused results

We all know that learning about our customers is important, but sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of an audience that’s growing and changing. Initial perceptions and assumptions can become outdated if you don’t take some time to research and reflect.

We were delighted to learn about ansarada’s successful, persona-focused approach to business video and marketing in general. A true testament to the benefits of knowing your audience and targeting unique segments, ansarada’s website redesign contributed to some promising results.

“As a year-on-year comparison, looking at September 2013 vs. 2014 (website launched in September of 2014), our website traffic doubled and our average number of web leads per month has tripled since pre-launch,” commented Taz.

While you may not have the time or resources to conduct lengthy workshops on the segments of your customer base, it’s important to make a habit of learning about your audience.

Does your company use personas? Do you have any “one message fits all” videos that could be broken into more targeted ones?