Question: Buyer Personas

1. Determine what kind of content you need

2. Set the tone, style, and delivery strategies for your content

3. Target the topics you should be writing about

4. Understand where buyers get their information and how they want to consume it

Background and Content Pillars

The Coca-Cola Company is a successful and globally-recognized beverage producer and has set its sights on doubling its business by 2020. Coca-Cola recognized that there were two prevailing changes occurring in the market: consumers were creating an ever-increasing amount of brand content, and technology had empowered them as never before to shape the brand. Coca-Cola identified that audiences are now largely in control of the brand--and not the other way around. Because the buyers now control the narrative instead of Coca-Cola being able to directly control its message to customers as it has in the past, they realized they needed to figure out how to harness the power of content marketing in order to engage consumers. Their focus became creating a digital content marketing strategy that engages customers in an open conversation, based on two key content pillars: liquid and linked.

• "Liquid" embodies the notion that our networked and connected world enables ideas to spread rapidly - liquid ideas are those that capture the imagination and cannot be controlled once they are put out in the world. While liquid ideas are creative, they are grounded in a linked strategy.

• "Linked" makes sure that ideas are always centered on the core brand story and experience - in other words, liquid ideas must reflect positively on the Coca-Cola brand. It also means that all the brand channels should be coherent and unified.

Content Marketing Plan Core Elements

The concepts of the liquid and linked pillars provide the context and foundation to the three core elements identified as key to Coca Cola's success with their new content marketing strategy: storytelling, consumer-generated content, and unified brand experience.

Storytelling: As part of the liquid principle, Coca-Cola recognized the power of storytelling. Stories create an emotional connection, connect people and spread ideas, which leads to conversations. In dynamic storytelling, a brand idea is released to the audience and picked up in various conversations and channels. One of Coca-Cola's key brand stories is ‘living positively' and showing how the brand makes the world a better place. This content idea also forms part of the company values, showing the importance of aligning business and content objectives. Each sub-brand has a big-picture content plan that outlines key elements of the story and how they will be disseminated.

Consumer-generated content: Consumer-generated content forms a cornerstone of the content strategy. Brand stories encourage consumer reactions and engagement (and are often created by the consumers themselves). The worldwide distribution of creativity and technology means that consumers have greater power than ever before to create and drive brand stories, which leads to emotional connections. Coca-Cola actively encourages fans to ‘act and react' to the stories.

Unified brand experience: Finally, Coca-Cola puts a lot of emphasis on creating a unified, coherent and accessible brand experience. While there are many stories to be told about the brand, it is still necessary to filter and edit these to ensure that they speak to the brand's key values. By focusing on content excellence, Coca-Cola is creating value and engagement, not merely noise. Maintaining this means that the brand must communicate effectively with staff around the world.

The Customer Persona

Coca-Cola would not have been able to identify the two pillars of their content marketing strategy, nor would they have been able to identify the three core elements driving the marketing plan. Now it's your turn to use this information to identify the buyer persona(s) used to build this content marketing strategy:

Who are these ideal customers and how do we get them to buy Coca-Cola products?

In the real world, to create your buyer personas, you would conduct interviews with customers, prospects, and members of your sales and customer service teams. You could also send out surveys and do your own research. In this assignment, the "research" element would be satisfied by reviewing Coca-Cola's presence on the internet and on social media channels. Looking there will help you focus on the following topics when creating each persona and help you address each of the following in your assignment:

1. Background: Details about your ideal customer; demographic, psychographic; extrinsic motivators; intrinsic motivators

2. Lifestyle details: What this person likes and dislikes, education, job, etc.

3. Main sources of information: Where your persona does his or her research

4. Goals: Persona's primary and secondary goals

5. Challenges/pain points: Your persona's challenges, and the emotions which accompany those challenges

6. Preferred content medium: How your persona likes to absorb content

7. Quotes: Bring your personas to life with actual quotes gathered during interviews (list 3-4 quotes you've seen on social media from Coke followers)

8. Objections: The objections you anticipate from your persona during the sales process

9. Role in the purchase process: Persona's influence in the decision-making process

10. Marketing message: The messaging that speaks directly to this persona

Please answer the 10 questions above thoroughly. Your answers MUST be comprehensive and reflect a deep understanding of your reading and course content. A few sentences for each is not enough.