Creating "Online"​ Dating Profiles for "Offline"​ Businesses

Image from GQ

At some point in my marketing career I became acutely aware of how marketers are conditioned to see India through an ‘outside’ perspective. These blogs are my effort to turn the tables, and dig into Indic mythology and scriptures in order to apply their wisdom to today’s marketing and business scenarios.

Today’s blog too will look a current topic of how smaller businesses are finally getting ready to make the digital commitment. This comes after years of eyeing digital from a distance and hesitating before committing to the inevitable. However, first, businesses need to be clear about ‘who’ their customer is.

Romancing from a distance – hesitation of businesses

This circling of one’s fate is not new. It reminded me of the part in the Ramayan when Ram and Sita first catch sight of each other in Janak’s (Sita’s father) royal gardens. They keep looking at each other from a distance and fall in love. They know they want to be together but need fate’s intervention.    

Mustering the courage – making a digital move 

Fate has intervened and now Indian businesses ‘need’ to go online to survive and grow. They can no longer delay making their move. Some neighbourhood stores are already experimenting with Whatsapp, as larger businesses plan their big digital weddings (no Zoom invites for these). In many family enterprises the younger generation is seizing the opportunity to digitise their businesses. Much like how sixteen year old Ram got his turn only after older kings had failed. 

Facilitators of fate – dreams of digital growth

However, even Ram needed Rishi Vishvamitra to convince King Janak to give the young prince a chance.

Similarly businesses keen to go digital seek ‘matchmakers’ to fulfil their digital dreams. These digital experts promise snazzy websites, huge web traffic, eye catching ads, people clicking and buying, unimaginable scale and fame. These promises are backed by measurable, empirical data, which is digital's big strength.

However, it is important to not get carried away with the planning so much that businesses forget who the effort is for! 

1. Understand what you want – digital customer groundwork

Before the Swayamvar, Ram did his homework on Sita. He learnt of her birth and her qualities as a young woman. Sita on the other hand was smitten by the handsome prince in the park. Thorough homework landed Ram a dutiful wife, and Sita wound up in a forest. 

Similarly, it is extremely important to understand your digital customer. There would be many more aspects to the person businesses have been dealing with offline so far.

This is also the part of the job that cannot be outsourced. Even matchmakers ask people what they are looking for in a partner.

So let’s look at some ways to make this critical job easier.

2. Image of the ideal partner – building the customer imagery 

Just as Rishi Vishvamitra painted the picture of Sita as the perfect spouse, businesses too need to build an ‘ideal customer’ profile. The traditional approach tends to list variables like; socio-economic strata, age, gender, geographical address, education… A typical customer profile would read like; SEC B, female, 25 years, postgraduate degree in computers, lives in Madurai, working for an IT company.

This doesn’t tell us WHO she is, and why should she care about what your business.

So let’s try a simple, step by step method of building a customer persona for an online sari business –

- Step 1 – do you ‘know’ an actual person who could be your ‘typical’ customer? This could be someone amongst your own family and friends. It could be the vegan friend who is always looking for organic ingredients, the uncle with the ageing rock music phase ponytail, or the brand conscious cousin. 

Agnostic of gender, age, race, this is about identifying a ‘real’ person who you want to go after. Depending on the type of business, this could work as an outline, or sometimes things fall into place at this stage itself.

An online sari shop could want to target people like actress Rekha, or Anushka Sharma. This would be two very different sari clients. While one sports traditional weaves, the other is more contemporary and experimental.

Example – let’s say we want to target Anushka Sharma

- Step 2 – try using personalities. These could be celebrities, characters they play in their films or TV series, or even from a book. This helps giving an ‘attitude’ to the silhouette identified in the previous step.

Our online sari store could go after one of the characters from a web series like ‘Four Shots More’, or a traditional Indian woman played by Jaya Bachhan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gam.

At this stage try to stay away from stereotypes, unless it adds a dimension to the character you are building.

Example - our ideal customer is Anushka Sharma from When Harry Met Sejal.  

- Step 3 – what does this person like? This is about granular specifics like; hobbies (music, gardening, reading), food preferences (Asian, Pizza, Indian), holiday destinations (beach, mountains, cities), other brands they buy (high-street, niche, organic), interests (traveling, yoga, trekking)… This helps round off the person in a little more detail and make the persona clearer.

Example - Anushka Sharma from When Harry Met Sejal. She loves traveling, trying new food, movies and shopping.

- Step 4 – what role would your product play in peoples’ lives? Can it solve a problem, or make life simpler? This is about ‘relevance’ and ‘rational’ reason to purchase, and not sales.

By example, does your business save time, provide variety, convenience of click and delivery, assured quality? Or is it a wardrobe solution for a family function or office meetings? Or is it about region specific products, or propriety designs.

This is when businesses start looking for, or creating the unicorn called the USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Reality is that most businesses are ‘different’ from one another but not unique. This step is about finding what differentiates your business from competition. 

Example - Anushka Sharma from When Harry Met Sejal. She loves traveling, trying new food, movies and shopping. She is looking for a mix of traditional and contemporary saris for her wedding trousseau.   

-  Step 5 – let’s look at the sociological or psychological needs your product could fulfil. This is the emotional gratification customers get so they can ‘justify’ their choices.   

Does the product make them stand out, seem tasteful, show an appreciation of Indian weaves, or maybe project power in a boardroom?

Trick is to avoid generic terms like happy, special, cheerful, pretty... It’s important to think of how you want to ‘make your customer feel’.  

Example - Anushka Sharma from When Harry Met Sejal. She loves traveling, trying new food, movies and shopping. She is looking for a mix of traditional and contemporary saris for her wedding trousseau. She loves draping these in unconventional ways to make a statement while modernising tradition.  

The perfect match 

The above description is only one possibility in the digital world. More importantly, it is a starting point. Businesses can always add more details, refine and even redefine these personas basis various indicators.

What is important is to pause a moment before making the digital move. Understand which kind of customer you want to target first. Once you know who you are looking for, communication touch points, occasions, messaging, media selection, results, all begin to fall into place. Almost like stars aligning for the perfect match as they did for the divine couple.