 Thank you, Bas, and thank you all for being here. It's great that you're still here. I want to introduce you to Zoe. She is a 27-year-old woman from Amsterdam, and she recently started her blog about yoga, because this is a big passion for her. She does this besides her work as a jurorist. And therefore, she has great writing skills, but she doesn't know anything about building websites with WordPress. SEO, conversion optimization, and stuff like that. So therefore, she was looking for information about blogging. Zoe could be a buyer persona for my blog, super blogger. But actually, she's not, because I don't really like buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictionalized characterizations of your best customer. And they're often based on consumer B, consumer research. But often, they're not. So that's why I want to tell you what the problem is with buyer personas and why I don't use them. Because this is the goal of my presentation. Big companies, they can use buyer personas. They can be helpful. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use them at all. But small businesses, they often don't have the resources to invest in expensive, time consuming buyer personas. And besides, it's very difficult to create good ones. So every business that wants to improve their online access and understand their potential customer that doesn't have the resources is good at this presentation. Otherwise, you can still stay. People may know me of the organizer of WordPress Camp Nijmegen. But you should know me as a blogger, a content creator, or someone who helps businesses, small and middle-sized, to become bigger. And I do that together with Odaf, who is also sitting in the audience. So let's continue with the problems with buyer personas. I could think of seven, but because I have a short time, we only discussed three, the first one. Buyer personas are not objective. Usually, they're based on stereotypes, the things you just know about people. And we are all biased. One say that's a good thing, but it's human. But don't use it for your buyer personas. The second thing, personas don't say anything about behavior. They're usually about the characteristics of your potential customer, like the demographics, sometimes maybe even social aspects, the social media they used, but not the behavior, how they go from a desire to a purchase. And third, buyer personas are created for individual consumers. Like, you can imagine that you have a specific target group. And maybe they share some characteristics, but the individual behaviors of these people can be very different, and so are the things you have to do to all attract them to your business. And also, there's no evidence that buyer personas actually work, maybe that big companies use them, but they're success. We can't prove that it's due to using buyer personas. And next to that, there are different ways to understand your potential customer. And you can just the information that is already out there that you can easily find to make an understanding and improve your online success. And those are these five. That are the five things I'm going to talk about, why you need to know them, how you can figure those out, and use them to make good decisions for your company. So the first one, what does your company want to know? I forgot a question. I actually wanted to know who of you uses buyer personas. OK, just a few of them. Who thought about using buyer personas, but thought, no, too much work. Also a few, well, I think you're going to like the things that I put together. So we all have that feeling like I'm the most important thing in the world. But I have to share a realization with you. Your customer doesn't care about you at all, not even a tiny bit. And the moment you realize that, you can start thinking about their desires, needs, and wishes. And you can find the problems of your customers and fix them, so they like you because you help them. And how can you do that? I put together four steps, the four steps that you could use to find the problem and solve it the right way. So that starts with finding a problem. For example, there is a woman or a man, and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he wants to go on an amazing holiday. So he has a problem, a small budget, great holiday. So the next step is you have to understand it, really understand it. So why doesn't he have a lot of money? Well, he loves adventurous things to do. So he also wants to do that, for example, on his holiday. But all the information he can find online, all the boring holidays, you can go to Spain. Those are for cheap. And then together with that is that when he finds something that is not expensive, when he clicks on it, the price rises. So then it's still expensive. So then you define the problem. OK, he hasn't enough money. Businesses are tricking him. So how can you help him? You solve the problem. And that can be done in many different ways. For example, you can share other options. You make a list of that. And very often, these problems don't have anything to do with the product you sell. But yeah, fun fact, your potential customer has more problems than products you actually sell. So get them in in different ways. And then the step is, where do you find then this information? He has problems. You can maybe think about it. You can talk to your customer. But there are like small different things how you can find the problems. For example, you have a website. You have all these different kinds of content. And you can see which information is read most. That may be an indication that they want to read more of that, dive deeper into it. Another thing is, how often do you read the reviews of your competitors? Who does that? No one. But in these reviews are very good ideas for your own company. For example, sorry, the example is in Dutch. But it says, for example, the quality. It's a natural product, but it's over in a year. So he has a problem with high quality products. You can maybe convince him that you have the best products. They are looking for quality, offer them. Another thing is long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are an indication that the customer has a problem with finding the things he needs. Like you have SEO, OK, you don't know what he needs. But if he needs where to learn SEO, that might be an indication that he doesn't know where to find the information he needs. So you're going to write something about all the different places where you can learn SEO. And then you might be like the only one, because it's hard to find. So the second step, how does your customer search? There are three questions that are important to answer when you want to answer this question. Where does the person search? What keywords do they use? And which keywords do they use during the different stages of the customer journey? So a question for you. Where does your consumer search? What's the first thing that pops in mind? Google, right. But it's not the only place. Like you have the simple search engine. But you also have images search. I think it might surprise you how many people search by just looking at images. I was surprised that I didn't even know people did this. Of course, Google Maps, when you're looking for a local product, you don't go to Google. No, you go directly to Google Maps. If you're aiming for the keywords, and you're not number one in Google Maps, you're missing an opportunity there. Bulb.com. When you want to book, are you using Google? No, you probably go directly to Bulb.com. And maybe even for some other products, like when I want to buy something technical, I directly go to Cool Blue. I directly go to Bulb.com. These are also used as search engines. And it won't help to be the best one in Google Web Search. And even marked plots. Like people buy new stuff from marked plots. Not only used products. So then the next step is which keywords. Use a keyword tool. Maybe that's quite obvious. But I really like keyword finder. I think it's the best thing that's out there. And for quite a reasonable price. So another way, if you have no clue what people search for, you can look at your competitors. Like in the URL, which keywords do they use? There are tools out there that have a very nice overview of the keywords that your competitor ranks for. Just steal them and do it even better. So you rank higher. And also important, you have to speak the language of your consumer. For example, I had a customer and he sells wallpaper designs, big ones, like posters. But we had no idea which his B2B customers actually used. So you won't find that in a keyword tool. But you can ask your consumer, like, how did you find me? Or maybe when you got an email, which terms did they use? And of course, you can always check in the Google Search Console, which phrases your consumer actually used when they found your website. And you can do more for that. So then the customer journey. It's very important that you pick the right keyword for every step in the customer journey. For example, someone is looking for ginger tea. You have no idea if they're looking for recipes, if they are looking for information about the health benefits. Maybe they want to even buy ginger tea or three different kinds of things. When they use where to buy ginger tea, you're sure. So you have information about all kinds of different places. But what are the health benefits of ginger tea? You can talk about the health benefits. And if you say ginger tea recipe, you offer that kind of information. Not only will you have this to rank higher for ginger tea in general, but you also have the right information for every step in a customer journey. And then the current supplier. So when you think about books, you think about bull.com. When you think about big TVs, you think about media markets. When you think about laptops, you think about Apple. In your branch, you want to be that brand people think of. So how do you become the number one? You look at your competition. For example, very easy, who is number one in Google for the terms you want to rank for? Not very difficult. You just Google. The second one, which company comes first to mind? Just what I did. Which companies can you think of? And now I didn't change something in my slides, I guess. Yeah, you can also ask your customer, what do you think of when you want to buy this? And now maybe you have the question, but what if my competition is just too good? If he has so many customers for all these years, how can I be number one so easily? And then there are different things you can do. There are unusual ways to be better than number one. That doesn't mean you have to have the most customers. It's just that you put yourself in a market for a reasonable amount of customers and grow slowly to be bigger and go ahead of your competition. Use trends to brand your company. For example, right now there is a trend that companies need to be more human. They don't need to be better humans. They need to be better brands. For example, Tony's Chocoloni. Very easy, they want to have a better market, more reasonable prices for the people who grew chocolate. Also level level with their quest to make the world more accessible. It's a good thing to do, not only a smart thing, but you also care about the people in the world. And also the vegetalist slager who has their mission to get people eat less meat. It's a human thing to do. They care about the world, they take responsibility and it's a way to put their selves out there. And therefore they make a quick groove and they just go ahead of their competition. Another way is to perform CPR on a deal market. Just blew new life into a market that no one cares about anymore, that no one wants to dive into because the competition is too high but you can do something different. Who of you knows Picnic? Not all of you, but many. They are a company that drives around different towns with their small and funny cars and they deliver groceries. They are, I think, the biggest company that deliver groceries and they have a major groove in the last few years. And they're even growing, like in Nijmegen where I live, I think there's a very line waiting list to get their groceries. And that's just because they did things differently. They performed CPR in the grocery store market. And then don't try to be the best brand, it's very hard to be the best brand but it's more easy to be a valuable brand. For example, IKEA, instead of just deliver the furniture and just say like, do what it, what you want, they now have these videos, they've had different seasons now, where they show how you can use their products to, you have those different rooms in your house where you have no idea what to do with it. They get them, get to them, help these people and turn some useless room into something beautiful and therefore they use their products. So they create value for their customer. And of course, I just named all kinds of different brands but especially this last one, your competitor is mostly not doing it. They try to be the best brand, not the most valuable. So there are a lot of opportunities of things you can do to help your customer. Number four, how do consumers make decisions? I think if you've been to different world camps in the last few years, you've heard a lot about people making decisions with their heart, with just, they just do it, not think about it. So it's always a fight between your brain and your heart. That's how people make decisions. But if you put this in a model, it looks very difficult. I will just explain it really easy. There's no, this suggests there's not such thing as or using your head or using your heart. It's a combination of both. Your customer might just react on a response and perform an action, but he also might think of it. So let's go through it. There is an impulsive system, just doing it without thinking and the reflective system where you think. So what you go to, there's a trigger in the environment that goes from perception, you see something in environment and you directly without thinking perform the behavior. For example, you see a cake and you think, hmm, that's a yummy cake, I'm gonna eat it. But then you have a whole reflective system that says, hmm, maybe I already had chocolate today and I actually want to live more healthy. And then instead of just performing the behavior, the person can just say like, maybe not this cake today. So then he performs a whole different kind of behavior than the environment, the stimulus in the environment actually would suggest. So when you have a customer, you have to keep in mind that he can just react, you can trigger him, you can nudge him into different directions and he doesn't even think about it, but he can also, if he has the motivation, it's time to do so, to not perform the action that you actually wanted to. So if we go more into the impulsive system, there are different things you can do. We already talked about this morning about the principles of Sialdini. We have at WordCamps talked about different principles, but I just wanted to talk about the social relations because they're very important. We're all humans in a world where everything is online. Now we want to seek into relations with others and acknowledge them. So one of the things is that people believe that popular things are also good things. So they would not only look at their own environment like the acquaintances, the family, but everyone who's actually out there and has an opinion about something, they care, they care about that. So you want to have a big following. And how can you do that? What if you have a product and you want many people to use it, but you only have three users yet? So one thing you can do is offer it for free. Yoast, for example, has a free plugin. It's one of the reasons why they became so big. The freemium model is gold. So if you haven't that yet, do it. The second thing, people buy from people, especially people they like. It's about owing someone, but also just like actually really like someone. It's easier to buy something from a nice lady than something who's grumpy all the time. So you want to be friends with your customers. So that also comes in line with the value of your company that you offer. Do things extra, not just sell your product, but care if someone has a problem to help them and you even offer something extra because then he will talk about you and then that other person will also be like, okay, that's a good company, I go there. So everything for the people. And oh yeah, I have a question for you again. Why do people go to Starbucks? Any ideas? A little bit louder, I can't hear it. No one? What do you mean with that? Exactly, for example. Does anyone think that Starbucks sells the best coffee of the world? Exactly. A product, a service becomes a part of the identity of the consumer. Nowadays, people make so many decisions about the products they use just because they feel good about it. Not that they like the product so much, maybe because they feel good about using the products and then the product becomes part of that. So make use of that. Find out what people like, what they care about and use that to market your product or create even a product. And then we come to the last one. I'm gonna drink again. You gotta look at this slide. So who of you uses these tools to analyze what people do on your website? A few. Who of you actually wanted to use these tools but that I don't know about these much, it's quite difficult and just didn't invest in it? No one thought that these tools would be hard to use? Well, actually they are. And I bet you just don't want to say so. So there are easier things to do that can help you to analyze the behavior of your consumers on your website and improve your websites. For example, which are the keywords that people use on your site when they use the search engine on your site? This is an indication that people can't find easily the stuff that they are looking for and then you have a big problem because we all know what happens when people can't find the stuff easily on your website. They leave. So use this and improve your websites so they can easily find the information they want. Then you have the information where people do enter your website, easily found in Google Analytics or other analytics tools. Where do they enter is the experience to have is it optimal, can it be better? Then on what pages spend visitors the most time? This is an indication that the page is probably good or they can't find the information and then you will probably see that they leave the website there, but we go, we come to that. So when something is good, you can use it. Use this information to improve your other websites where people don't spend a long time. Then you have again, which conversions work? When you know when something works, it is good so you should use it to improve the things that don't work. And then you have where do people abandon your website? It's always sad to see that you put hard work in your website and people just leave after 10 seconds, especially when you have, for example, a blog post, you wrote like an old day about it and then they just leave after 10 seconds, they didn't read it. So use this information, okay, why could they leave? And check where people don't leave because they would like that more and combine that to create a better website. So you could use it to Google Analytics to find out this information, but I think that Google Analytics is a real marketers tool. Like if you really want to get good information out of it, you need to learn, you need to learn about it and maybe you don't have time for that because you're a hardworking entrepreneur and there are other things to do. So you could use Clicky. It's also an analytics tool and I think that the information you're finding, Clicky, you have a way better overview about these five things that you want to know. So I should say if you never look at Google Analytics, but you want to understand what people do on your website, check it out. And I have a final thought. Understanding your customer is very important for the success of your online business. But I can also... Yeah, I understand that it can be quite hard to start with consumer research because it is time consuming, it is expensive and it is difficult. So I would say start small with the five things I told you today and try it out if you can get a little bit more knowledge about your customer. So see what word can I make? Thank you.