Do you ever wish there was two of you? One you could take care of the email follow-ups and millions of other business tasks you do, and another could enjoy fun stuff in life. The bad news is you can’t (and shouldn’t) clone yourself, but the good news is you can have software do lots of things for you. Here are a few of the best marketing automation tools in 2024.

Best Instagram Automation Tools

ManyChat

If you’ve been on Instagram lately, you’ve probably seen seen a creator tell you to comment a word to receive some freebie. Chances are high that they use ManyChat for that. ManyChat lets you create automatic replies based on a trigger word, so that you can send them a link to a lead magnet or resource of some kind.

This has lots of advantages over sending a user to a link in your bio.

• It’s more direct and therefore more likely they go where you want them to go.
• It improves the number of other people seeing your post or reel because Instagram likes when people interact on posts.
• You can additional context and info to your messages to get people to click your link.
• You can chat more with the user after they click the message.

In addition to Instagram messages, ManyChat works great for setting up chatbots and automatic responders on Facebook and other platforms, too.  We use it at RefinerFire, and I have personally used it as a marketing automation tool for several years.

Pros: Powerful engagement, increased post reach, lots of templates

Cons: Used by lots of creators already

Free Tier: Yes

Pricing: Starts at $15 per month for Pro Plans

Best Email Automation Tools

MailChimp

MailChimp may be one of the best known email marketing platforms out there, and they offer lots of email marketing automation options to choose from. Most businesses can benefit from their email journey tool for starters. Their journey builder allows you to visually map out an automatic sequence of emails a subscriber will receive based on some trigger.

For instance, let’s suppose you want to send a series of emails to every person who signs up for your newsletter. You can set the trigger based on the sign up form completion. Then from there, you can plan out which emails they will receive and when they’ll be sent. You can also queue emails based on whether they open an email or click a link.

Here at RefinerFire we use automate our newsletters using MailChimp’s RSS Email Feature. Every time a blog article gets published on our site, the article gets sent to subscribers the next day without lifting a finger. We did this by connecting WordPress’s built-in RSS feed to MailChimp. From there, we built a template and made it live.

Pros: Powerful visual builder, lots of templates

Cons: Can get complex

Free Tier: Limited. Free tier does not include automation.

Pricing: Starts at $13.00 per month

Best Print-On-Demand Automation Tools

Printify

In the old days, you needed to have products in stock before you could sell them. Not anymore. Print-on-demand now lets you place your designs on hundreds of products without having to keep the products on hand. Among print-on-demand companies, Printify is the clear leader of the pack.

First, you connect Printify to your ecommerce stores on any of the following platforms:

• Amazon
• TikTok Shop
• Shopify
• WooCommerce (WordPress)
• Etsy
• And More

Then you choose products you’d like to sell from their extensive catalog. From there, you use their easy to use tools to place the design on the product and fill in specific product details. Printify will automatically create the listing on the platform you’ve connected. Then when someone places an order it will automatically route the order to the printer who takes care of production and delivery to the customer. You can see it in action on the site we created for Beneath the Broom Tree.

Pros: Simple set-up, low start-up costs, variety of platforms, production and delivery done for you

Cons: Cost per item higher than if you bought in bulk

Free Tier: Yes.

Pricing: You load money to cover production expenses up front and Printify withdraws the amount needed to produce and deliver the item each time a sale is made in your store. Printify Premium allows you to receive discounted prices on goods.

Best Ecommerce Automation Tools

Shopify

Shopify is already one of the top ecommerce platforms out there, but many people have no clue that it also includes built-in marketing automation tools, too. First, you’ll need to install Shopify’s Flow app which is included for free in all Shopify’s plans starting with Basic.

Like with other marketing automation tools, Shopify Flow automations start with some sort of trigger action that tells the automation to run. Triggers can include actions that you take in Shopify’s admin area such as publishing a product or tagging an order. They can also be actions your customers take in your store. From there, you can steps to take that would normally be done manually.

Let’s say a customer buys a product for example. You can create an automation that checks the stock levels and notifies you to order more stock via email or Slack message. You can also kick off campaigns, cancel fraudulent orders, and much more. Shopify has lots of useful templates or you can dig in yourself.

Pros: Lots of templates, powerful visual builder, also works with Point of Sale (POS)

Cons: Can be complex to do on your own

Free Tier: No, but there is a free trial.

Pricing: Shopify’s basic plan is $29/mo.

Best Overall Marketing Automation Tools

Zapier

Without a doubt, Zapier boasts the most extensive array of integrations of any marketing automation tool. In fact, it works with more than 7,000 different applications from around the web.

That said, Zapier has made some great strides in recent years in simplifying the automation set up, but it can still be overwhelming for someone new to automation. Unlike the built-in automation tools for MailChimp and Shopify, Zapier has to connect itself to the apps you want to automate.

Another common stumbling block is the mapping of fields. When creating integrations, you’ll be presented with pieces of data commonly called fields, and often you have to map, or match up, a field from one program to put the data into a field in another program. Sometimes this can be painful to say the least.

Pros: Lots of app choices, useful built-in tools, some useful templates

Cons: Often complex, must maintain connections to individual apps

Free Tier: Yes, includes 100 tasks per month

Pricing: Paid tiers start at $19.99/mo for 750 tasks

Make.com

Zapier is not the only marketing automation tool in town. Make (formerly known as Integromat) offers a robust app ecosystem as well, but at a much friendlier price point.

Make.com is our preferred marketing automation platform at RefinerFire. In fact, it’s the tool that powers our Target Market Analysis Tool behind the scenes.

For that automation, we created a webhook to receive messages send the data as a prompt to Claude AI and send it you via MailChimp. As you can see, Make.com uses a visual builder help you get a sense of the flow of the automation from trigger to completion.

Pros: Lots of app choices, Affordable, highly visual

Cons: Can be complex

Free Tier: Yes, includes 1,000 tasks per month

Pricing: Paid tiers start at $9.99/mo for 10,000 operations

The Future of Marketing Automation Tool

Even with all of the resources we’ve shared here, we have barely scratched the surface of marketing automation. With AI poised to become a larger role in business we could be at the cusp of an explosion of new tools. As new tools come online, we will be sure to update this list. 

Until next time, take care and God bless you!

A Note About These Links

Some of the links used in this article are affiliate links. That means we receive a small payment if you buy that company’s products after clicking our link.  We are committed to only recommend products we have actually used and feel confident in recommending.

Your customers have problems…lots of them. That may sound like a bad thing, but it’s not. It’s an opportunity! You see, if your product solves a valuable problem, people are happy to pay for the solution. Today, we’ll look at a how to analyze customer needs to improve your products and your marketing.

Understanding the Customer Experience

Most business owners can tell you their customers needs at a high-level, but the real insights come from zooming into each step of the process. For instance, a plumber knows his customers may need help with fixing a leak, but what steps does the customer have to go through to get that leak fixed?
Let’s map out the process.

1. The customer realizes they have a leak.
2. They consider whether to fix it themselves.
3. The customer decides to find a plumber.
4. Next, they search for potential plumbers online.
5. The customer calls plumbers to get prices and availability.
6. After a few calls, the customer schedules service.
7. The customer waits for the plumbing technician.
8. The tech assesses the repairs needed and gets permission to proceed.
9. The repair is completed.
10. The client pays for services.

You can see that even a straightforward product actually involves lots of steps. Now consider that each of those steps comes with their own opportunities to gain or lose customers. For example, what if the customer does not know they have a leak in step 1? Simply helping customers know the signs of leaks could create new business.

Finding Pain Points In the Customer Journey

So how do we find the opportunities to improve the customer experience? We find the major pain points at each step in the process, and we brainstorm ways to address these needs. For instance, paying for the service presents several potential problems in the minds of your customers.

• What methods of payment are available?
• How will I afford this expensive repair?
• Can I trust the employee with payment info?
• What happens if it breaks again?
• How can I keep track of what I’ve paid for?

You may identify customer needs that can be fixed easily, but others will take more effort and consideration. For these types of problems, you will need a way to prioritize the customer needs you want to focus on.

Prioritizing Your Opportunities

Harvard Business School’s Innovation Lab suggests a 4U framework to consider which problems present the best business opportunities. Each "U" describes a characteristic of a problem that has the highest likelihood to motivate a person to find a solution. The more of these traits that apply to a problem, the better:

• Unworkable – An intolerable problem with severe consequences.
• Unavoidable – A problem that people will definitely encounter.
• Underserved – A problem no one else recognizes or has fixed.
• Urgent – A problem that can’t wait.

We will dive deeper into these traits in a future post, but let’s apply this framework to our customer needs analysis for payments.

Analyzing Business Opportunities From Customer Pain Points

We can think of each trait in the 4 U Problem Evaluation framework as a range. To keep it simple, let’s use a number from 0 to 10 to score how much each characteristic applies to a pain point. Zero will mean not applicable, and ten will mean very applicable. Now let’s see how this applies to the customer’s payment needs.

Looking at the scores, you can see that payments are an important, but largely solved, problem in the industry. That’s why most pain points scored low in the Underserved and Urgent categories. However, one customer need did outscore the others: affordability. So out of all the needs considered, finding a solution for affordability will likely have the biggest impact.

Finding Customers’ Hidden Needs

A leaky pipe clearly needs to be fixed, but sometimes the problems you solve are not so obvious. What if you’re selling handmade bracelets or gourmet dog treats or something else no one absolutely needs? These types of products still serve some customer need, but they may be psychological or social rather than physical.

Consider why a shopper buys luxury clothing for example. A generic t-shirt can do just as good of a job covering your body, so why spend the extra money on a premium brand? For one thing, the luxury brand has exclusivity because of its price point, so wearing Gucci or Chanel communicates something about social status. You can afford this expensive clothing.

So then what need does the luxury clothing actually serve? These customers have a social need to communicate their status, and they may also have a psychological need to portray their identity as a fashion forward person. A company can capitalize on this need by building a brand that appeals to the market segment with this need.

Understanding the Marketability of Solutions

Now that you understand how identify customer needs, you also need to understand the relative difficulty of the problem you’re solving. Of course, you’ll need to figure the logistics of getting your product to market like finding suppliers and building your website, but there’s more. You also need to understand the marketability of your offerings.

The 4 U problem framework we mentioned earlier can offer some insights, but we can also evaluate customer needs using a BLAC matrix. Like the 4 U’s, the BLAC matrix is another framework from the Harvard Business Innovation Lab. With the BLAC matrix, you will judge the customer need on 2 axes:

• Blatant vs. Latent
• Aspirational vs. Critical

Blatant vs. Latent Needs

On the first axis, blatant refers to an obvious problem that customer readily knows they need to solve such as the leaky pipe example. Latent describes needs that the customers are not explicitly aware they have. The need to communicate social status would be a latent need.

Most problems will not be perfectly blatant or latent. They will occur on a spectrum, and, in general, a blatant need will be easier to market and sell than a latent need. That’s because you have the extra work of building awareness of the latent need before you can even try to sell the product. It is not an impossible task, but it may require extra time and expense.

Aspirational vs. Critical Needs

The aspirational vs. critical axis refers to how important it is to meet the need. Aspirational needs things people want but they can get by without. Critical needs must be met or there will be some negative consequences. Critical needs will typically be easier to market and sell.

If we bring this together with the Blatant vs. Latent axis, we can see four ways to classify customer needs.

1. Blatant and Critical Customer Needs – Solutions will be the easiest to market.
2. Blatant and Aspirational Customer Needs – Solutions are moderately easy to market.
3. Latent and Critical Customer Needs – Solutions can be marketed but may require time to close sales.
4. Latent and Aspirational Customer Needs – Solutions will be most difficult to market.

Adjusting Your Product and Marketing

After identifying your customers’ needs, you may have the realization that you are on the wrong path. Or maybe the needs that were once blatant and critical ten years ago are no longer so critical. Believe it or not, that’s good! You’re now aware of the problem holding your sales back, and you can do some thing to fix it.

All companies have to pivot sometimes. Netflix once mailed DVD rentals. Now they are a streaming giant. Play-doh was once used for cleaning walls. Toyota used to sell looms. With these frameworks for analyzing customer needs, you’ll be able to pivot in the right direction.

So maybe you’re a plumber that needs a website to meet customer’s changing expectations. Or perhaps it’s time to rebrand your clothing store to attract a new audience. Or maybe you have a great app idea you want to vet. Whatever your business, knowing your customers needs will point you towards success.

Until next week. Take care and God bless!

Just this week, researchers found a critical flaw that would allow hackers to take over 5,000,000 sites. Imagine if one of those sites was your site. Think about how much time and money could you lose. Fortunately, any business owner can learn the basics on how to secure their WordPress site.

Here are our five tips on how to secure a WordPress site that even beginners can do.

1. Use a Security Plugin

The wonderful thing about WordPress is the array of plugins available to extend its basic functions. There are many free plugins available to secure different aspects of your WordPress site, but we highly recommend WordFence.

WordFence is a powerful all-in-one security plug-in that provides:

• A built-in firewall
• Automatic malware scans
• Login protection
• Security notifications

Simply installing this plugin will already put you well ahead of the curve on security, and we install this plugin on nearly every website we build for our clients. Because it’s comprehensive, it comes with lots of options, but for most businesses the default settings work just fine.

2. Avoid Common Usernames and Passwords

Criminals commonly use programs that will try thousands of usernames and passwords to force their way into an account. You can slow their attempts by using unique passwords and usernames.

List of commonly used usernames attacked by hackers.

The list above shows usernames that hackers attempted to use to log onto this website without permission. You can see that “admin” tops the list because it is the default username most site admins use to log into a site. In general, we recommend never using the following usernames on a WordPress site:

• admin
• webmaster
• root
• support
• customerservice
• sysadmin
• your site’s url
• test
• host
• manager

Instead you should opt for a username that has unique meaning to you or your organization without being too obvious. A good username should be paired with a strong password containing a mix of letters, numbers, and characters.

3. Use SSL Certificates

Have you ever noticed that most websites use https instead of http nowadays? The extra “s” means that site uses a secure socket layer or SSL certificate. Your computer uses the SSL certificate to encrypt information traveling between your computer and the server.

Many web hosts* include SSL certificates for free, but you will want to double check just in case. Not only will it affect your security, but it can also tank your Search Engine Optimization if you don’t have one set up. You can contact your hosting company for assistance with setting this up.

Once the SSL certificate is installed you should also ensure that all traffic gets redirected to the https version of your site automatically. Usually, you can control this in your web host’s settings, but you can also install a plugin like Really Simple SSL to do this for you if not.

4. Back Up Your Site Frequently

Even with security measures in place, sometimes things still go wrong with your site. An update can break features. Hackers can make it through your firewall. You get hit with ransomware because an employee clicks the wrong link. Whatever the case, a back up copy can be a life saver.

A good backup program will save a copy of your site’s database and files on a set schedule. Your web host provider may have software on their servers that can do this for you, or you can set up backups using a plugin such as UpdraftPlus.

Ideally, you will store this data in a location not on your server. That way if the server is compromised you still have access your data to restore it in another location.

5. Keep Plugins and Themes Up to Date

Of all the tips on how to keep a WordPress site secure, this has to be the simplest…and most overlooked. Business owners are busy people, and they hardly give their website a second thought as long as it is working. The problem is what they don’t see.

Criminals are creative, and their tactics change constantly. As a result, software companies have to constantly adjust their software to counter new vulnerabilities. Those updates won’t work unless they’re installed though. A simple weekly update can save you from huge headaches.

If you’re so slammed that you can’t spare the extra hour a month, we offer services as low $50 a month to take care of it for you. Either way, it’s not something you want to put off.

Learn More About How To Secure a WordPress Site

By now you know the basics about how to secure a WordPress site, but keeping your website healthy can get complicated fast. So let’s leave you with a little gift. Enter your email below, and we’ll send you a free checklist of essential tasks to keep your WordPress running smoothly.

This checklist will include the security tasks we could not cover here plus tips to improve your site performance and SEO. And no we won’t bombard you with marketing emails (unless you really want us to). Complete the form to get started.

Last week, we learned to use AI to create marketing personas of our ideal customers. This week let’s put AI to work! Using the RAFT method discussed last week, we asked an AI tool to create personas for businesses in different industries. Here are the results along with some thoughts on each persona.

Marketing Persona for a Plumber

First up, our AI generated a persona for a plumber's ideal client. Notice how detailed the specificity generated by the AI. Even the customer daily routine is taken into account. The customer's home is old enough to likely need repairs, and she has the ability to foot the bill. These are two crucial considerations for choosing a target audience.

Meet Homeowner Helen Thompson

Specific Details:

1. Graduated from University of North Florida with a degree in Business Administration
2. Works full-time, often bringing work home in the evenings
3. Active in her children's school PTA and volunteers at local animal shelter once a month
4. Enjoys yoga and attends classes twice a week at a local studio
5. Avid gardener, maintaining a small vegetable garden in the backyard
6. Likes to host dinner parties for friends and family about once a month
7. Planning a kitchen renovation in the next year
8. Has an older dog (10-year-old Labrador Retriever) and a cat
9. Shops primarily at Publix for groceries and Target for household items
10. Watches HGTV and follows home improvement accounts on Instagram for inspiration
11. Uses a smart thermostat and is interested in other smart home technologies
12. Has had the same plumber for years but is dissatisfied with their recent service and availability

Daily Routine:

• Wakes up at 6 AM for a quick yoga session or morning run
• Prepares breakfast for the family and gets kids ready for school
• Works from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM, often taking lunch at her desk
• Picks up kids from after-school activities around 6 PM
• Prepares dinner while helping kids with homework
• Enjoys an hour of TV or reading before bed at 10:30 PM

Recent Plumbing Concerns:

1. Noticed a gradual increase in water bill over the past few months
2. Garbage disposal in the kitchen is making unusual noises
3. Considering replacing the water heater as it's nearing the end of its lifespan
4. Interested in water-saving fixtures for the upcoming kitchen renovation

Goals:

1. Maintain a comfortable, functional home for her family
2. Resolve plumbing issues quickly and efficiently
3. Avoid costly repairs by addressing problems early
4. Find reliable service providers she can trust long-term

Priorities:

1. Family's comfort and safety
2. Time management (balancing work and family life)
3. Home maintenance and improvement
4. Budget-conscious spending

Concerns:

1. Unexpected plumbing emergencies disrupting daily life
2. Potential water damage to her home
3. Rising utility bills due to inefficient plumbing
4. Finding honest, reliable contractors

Pain Points:

1. Difficulty in scheduling service around her busy work/family life
2. Past experiences with unreliable or overpriced contractors
3. Stress of dealing with plumbing emergencies
4. Lack of knowledge about plumbing systems and when to seek professional help

Values:

1. Reliability and punctuality in service providers
2. Transparency in pricing and work performed
3. Professionalism and respect for her home and family
4. Quality workmanship that lasts
5. Environmental consciousness (water conservation, eco-friendly solutions)

Preferred Communication Channels:

1. Mobile-friendly websites
2. Text messages for appointments and updates
3. Social media (particularly Facebook and NextDoor)
4. Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and neighbors

Marketing Persona for a Professional Photographer

Next, let's look at a persona of the ideal client for a wedding photographer. In this persona the AI smartly included a special section for the wedding vision. As we mentioned in our first persona guide, your industry will often have niche considerations to take into account. Knowing this information could provide valuable insights about which types of photos to highlight in the photographer's marketing.

Meet Bride-to-be Brittany Johnson

Specific Details:

1. Got engaged 6 months ago and planning a wedding for next spring
2. Active on social media, particularly Instagram and Pinterest
3. Enjoys yoga, brunch with friends, and weekend getaways
4. Shops at Anthropologie, Free People, and local boutiques
5. Listens to podcasts about relationships and personal growth
6. Watches "Say Yes to the Dress" and follows wedding inspiration accounts on Instagram
7. Has a golden retriever named Charlie
8. Enjoys craft cocktails and trying new restaurants
9. Volunteers at a local animal shelter once a month
10. Dreams of a honeymoon in Bali

Goals:

1. Plan a beautiful, Instagram-worthy wedding that reflects her and Michael's personalities
2. Create lasting memories of her special day
3. Stay within budget while still having the wedding of her dreams
4. Ensure the day runs smoothly for herself and her guests

Priorities:

1. Finding vendors who understand her vision and can execute it flawlessly
2. Capturing genuine, emotional moments of the wedding day
3. Getting high-quality, artistic photos that she can proudly display and share
4. Staying organized and on top of wedding planning tasks

Concerns:

1. Choosing the wrong photographer and regretting it after the wedding
2. Missing important moments or shots during the ceremony and reception
3. Looking awkward or unphotogenic in photos
4. Balancing her desire for extensive photo coverage with her budget

Pain Points:

1. Feeling overwhelmed by the number of wedding photographers to choose from
2. Difficulty in comparing photographers' styles and packages
3. Stress about coordinating all aspects of the wedding, including photography
4. Worry about rain or bad weather affecting outdoor photo opportunities

Values:

1. Authenticity in capturing real moments and emotions
2. Creativity and artistic vision in photography
3. Professionalism and reliability in vendors
4. Attention to detail
5. Personal connection with chosen vendors
6. Eco-consciousness (interested in photographers who use sustainable practices)

Preferred Communication Channels:

1. Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration
2. Email for detailed communications
3. Text messages for quick updates
4. Video calls for consultations and planning sessions

Wedding Vision:

• Rustic-chic theme with a touch of bohemian style
• Outdoor ceremony in a garden setting, indoor reception at a converted warehouse
• Color palette: Dusty blue, sage green, and blush pink
• 120 guests
• Emphasis on candid, journalistic-style photos along with some carefully posed shots

Marketing Persona for an Accountant

In this example, we see that the accountant is more focused on B2B, and so a small business owner is chosen for the marketing persona for an accountant. Here we find that the business is more motivated by fear of loss, and so reinforcing security and stability will be key to the accountant's marketing strategy.

Meet Small Business Owner Sam Parker

Specific Details:

1. Started his brewery after 10 years in corporate marketing
2. Married to Lisa (39, elementary school teacher) with two children: Jack (8) and Emma (6)
3. Lives in a suburban neighborhood, 20-minute drive from his brewery
4. Drives a 2018 Ford F-150 for business needs
5. Avid craft beer enthusiast and home brewer before starting his business
6. Active member of the local chamber of commerce
7. Enjoys hiking and camping with family on weekends
8. Listens to business and entrepreneurship podcasts during his commute
9. Uses QuickBooks for basic bookkeeping but struggles with more complex financial tasks
10. Plans to open a second location in the next 2 years

Goals:

1. Grow his business sustainably and open a second location
2. Improve profitability and cash flow management
3. Ensure compliance with tax laws and regulations
4. Streamline financial processes to focus more on brewing and business development
5. Secure funding for expansion plans

Priorities:

1. Accurate and timely financial reporting
2. Tax optimization and compliance
3. Cost control and efficiency in operations
4. Making informed financial decisions for business growth
5. Work-life balance to spend time with family

Concerns:

1. Missing out on potential tax deductions or credits
2. Making costly financial mistakes due to lack of expertise
3. Falling behind on tax obligations or other regulatory requirements
4. Overpaying on taxes
5. Not having clear visibility into the financial health of his business

Pain Points:

1. Spending too much time on bookkeeping and financial management
2. Difficulty in interpreting financial data to make business decisions
3. Stress during tax season and audit preparations
4. Challenges in managing payroll as the team grows
5. Uncertainty about the financial implications of opening a second location

Values:

1. Integrity and transparency in business practices
2. Quality and craftsmanship in his product
3. Supporting local community and economy
4. Environmental sustainability in brewing practices
5. Building strong, long-term relationships with suppliers and customers

Preferred Communication Channels:

1. Email for detailed communications and document sharing
2. Phone calls for quick questions or urgent matters
3. Quarterly in-person meetings for comprehensive financial reviews
4. Secure online portal for accessing financial documents and reports

Financial Challenges:

1. Managing seasonal fluctuations in cash flow
2. Navigating complex regulations in the alcohol industry
3. Balancing inventory costs with production needs
4. Understanding and optimizing the tax implications of various business decisions
5. Planning for long-term financial stability and growth

Marketing Persona for a Restaurant

In our marketing persona for a restaurant, we find that the customer is keenly focused on social media. This suggests that the restaurant owner may want to focus their marketing strategy on short form video on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. She may also want to consider partnerships with influencers who can get their food in front of people like our customer avatar.

Meet Foodie Fiona Rodriguez:

Specific Details:

1. First-generation Mexican-American, fluent in English and Spanish
2. Rents a modern apartment with Alex, walking distance to many restaurants
3. Drives a hybrid car but prefers to walk or use ride-sharing services when dining out
4. Avid food enthusiast who enjoys trying new cuisines and fusion concepts
5. Active on Instagram and TikTok, often posting about her dining experiences
6. Enjoys cooking at home but dines out 3-4 times a week
7. Practices yoga and attends spin classes regularly
8. Listens to food and culture podcasts
9. Enjoys craft cocktails and is interested in mixology
10. No children, but has a rescue cat named Mochi

Goals:

1. Discover unique dining experiences in Austin
2. Support local businesses, especially those with innovative concepts
3. Expand her palate and knowledge of different cuisines
4. Share exciting food finds with her social media followers
5. Maintain a balance between healthy eating and indulgent experiences

Priorities:

1. Quality and authenticity of food
2. Innovative flavor combinations and presentations
3. Ambiance and overall dining experience
4. Ethical and sustainable restaurant practices
5. Value for money (willing to pay more for quality, but expects it to be worth it)

Concerns:

1. Keeping up with Austin's rapidly evolving food scene
2. Finding restaurants that cater to her adventurous palate
3. Balancing her love for dining out with health and budget considerations
4. Securing reservations at popular new restaurants
5. Dietary considerations (tries to eat vegetarian a few days a week)

Pain Points:

1. Disappointment with overhyped restaurants that don't deliver on quality
2. Long wait times at popular eateries
3. Lack of variety in some restaurant menus
4. Difficulty finding dining partners as adventurous as her
5. Inconsistent experiences at some of her favorite places

Values:

1. Culinary creativity and innovation
2. Cultural diversity and fusion
3. Sustainability and ethical food sourcing
4. Supporting local businesses and chefs
5. Sharing experiences and building community through food

Preferred Communication Channels:

1. Instagram and TikTok for visual content and quick updates
2. Email for newsletters and special event invitations
3. Restaurant booking apps for reservations
4. Food blogs and review sites for in-depth information

Dining Habits:

1. Prefers to try new places during weekday dinners to avoid crowds
2. Enjoys leisurely brunches on weekends with friends
3. Often plans date nights around trying new restaurants
4. Participates in local food festivals and pop-up events
5. Follows food influencers and local chefs on social media for recommendations

Conclusion

Overall, AI does a nice job capturing the essence of a customer with the right prompting, but they all have one common flaw. They are generic. That is why we strongly recommend using AI as a starting point and not an end product.

Have fun with it and let your imagination run free. The extra brainstorming can mean the difference between marketing that treats people like a robot and marketing that recognizes people’s humanity. We’d rather be people centered. How about you?

When To Use AI For Marketing

Before we get too far, you need to understand how AI works. That way you understand when to use it and when to leave it on the shelf.

At its core, AI is a method for manipulating info from large sets of data. AI especially excels at spotting patterns in data from multiple sources. It can then rearrange the pieces into different types of output. That output might be summaries, explanations, or even images.

This creates some natural limitations to consider. First, the quality and nature of the input affect the output. Secondly, no matter how creative it may seem, AI’s output is simply the answer to a math equation. It cannot replace the things that make you unique. That makes it great for planning or short pieces of content, but you do not want to count on AI for all of your content.

Which AI Model Works Best For Marketing?

You should also understand that not all AI models are equal. The source of their data, their algorithms, and processing power will affect your experience. For instance, the most popular AI model, ChatGPT, offers a well balanced experience in all three areas, and you can even use ChatGPT 4o mini for free for small tasks.

Google also offers its own AI model known as Gemini. This AI model has been in a race to catch up to ChatGPT, and at times it shows. The AI also appears to use a much wider swath of the internet to train its models which may affect the data quality, and it raises some ethical concerns about whether Google has the right to use this information.

At RefinerFire, we use Anthropic’s Claude AI for our Target Market Analysis Tool. Their latest Claude 3.0 models have outperformed other models on several key metrics, and they are trained on a closed set of information that gets updated at regular intervals. The ethical data sourcing and high performance make Claude a great choice to assist with marketing.

Using Prompts to Instruct the AI Tool

Regardless of the AI model you choose, the instructions you provide will greatly impact the output you receive. We’ll use the RAFT framework to make sure the AI has all the information it needs to create the response we want. This framework guides the instructions, or prompts, we enter into the AI tool

Each letter stands for an element that should be included in your prompts and the order you should provide them in.

1. Role
2. Action
3. Format
4. Tweaks

Role

The first part of your prompt should set up the role and expertise the AI will bring to the table. Providing specific details here will improve the results. For example, you might start with a prompt like:

You are a marketing expert who specializes in helping home services companies grow their business through digital channels.

The Role prompt can be entered on its own or bundled with the next two parts. Entering the prompt on its own does help you make sure the AI understands the role completely, so typically we will include enter this prompt right away.

Action

Next, you need to provide an action you’d like the AI model to take. In our case, we want to create a marketing persona for a specific use case, so we could tell the AI:

Create a marketing persona of the ideal customer for a commercial plumber in the Jacksonville, Florida metro area.

Notice again how we provided specific details such as the metro area and type of plumbing. This specific information will help eliminate irrelevant customer types, so we will get more useful results.

Format

Format refers to the way data should be organized, and it also includes the specific details that should be in the AI marketing persona. Usually, you will enter this information with the Action prompt to save some back and forth. So building on the prompt from a moment ago you would have:

Create a marketing persona of the ideal customer for a commercial plumber in the Jacksonville, Florida metro area. Include bulleted lists with 5 of their priorities, 5 of their fears in choosing a plumber, and 5 interests that can be used for targeting.

Once you enter the prompt, the AI will create your marketing persona. At this point, you will want to review it to make sure that it makes sense. Using AI for marketing personas can sometimes create unpredictable results, and you’ll want to take the information with a grain of salt.

Tweaks

Now that you’ve reviewed the marketing persona generated by the AI model, you will want to follow up. If the results are vague in one area, then you can instruct the AI to tell you more information about that point. You can also ask why it generated certain qualities in the persona.

It can also be useful to ask follow up questions to dig deeper into who the customer represented by the persona. For instance, you might ask about what types of businesses are most likely to need plumbing services. Or you can ask about the decision making process for the customer. Use the AI as if you were trying to get to know that person.

Using the AI Output In Your Marketing

By this point, the AI will have generated a full marketing persona for your ideal customer, but you should treat this more like a head start than a finished product. Using AI for marketing is an inexact science, and sometimes the AI model can get things wrong. Like Teddy Roosevelt advised, we should trust, but verify.

Like we mentioned in our article about personas, nothing can replace talking to your customers! Use these conversations to add more depth and richness to persona generated by the AI. Then as your created your marketing messages pretend as if you’re talking directly to the customer portrayed in your marketing persona.

Other Ways to Use AI for Marketing

This same advice applies to other ways you use AI for marketing. The RAFT framework can be used to generate everything from captions to emails with AI, but you should rarely use the AI output directly. Always fact check and revise to make it fit your voice and your brand.

AI promises to unleash a flood of new content on the web, and the only way to stand out will be to be uniquely you. This will improve the chances your content surfaces on digital platforms like social media and search engines who can detect content made with AI. More importantly, it will create trust with your potential customers.

You are the expert in your domain. You are the one with actual thoughts and opinions. You are a real person, and that’s something AI can never be.

Until next time, take care and God bless!

As a devout Catholic, modern business troubles me. Over the last several years, I have been in the thick of it as a web designer and marketer. Over and over again I saw people being deceived and manipulated by big businesses. For years, I was complicit in this manipulation because I was promoting companies using these practices.

Something had to change, and that’s why I started RefinerFire Web Systems. I decided I’m going to give people a way to promote their business that won’t make them compromise their beliefs. Better yet, I’d implement business systems that would simplify and improve their sales, marketing, and operations.

How Does RefinerFire Help Small Businesses?

The concept is simple. First, RefinerFire ensures your business has a powerful website to be the foundation of your web presence. Then we add other layers like email marketing and social media on top of this foundation to get your business in front of the right people. Then along the way we build automations and systems that will help you serve your customers more effectively and efficiently.

Now maybe your small business already has some of these pieces in place. That’s great. We can complement whatever is already working for you. That why the entire process starts with us getting to know your business and who you serve. Then we’re able to figure where to go with the rest of your business systems.

Who Is RefinerFire?

At this point, I should back up because I keep saying “we.” While I am the driving force behind the majority of the work at RefinerFire, I also have some amazingly talented partners that I like to bring onto projects, too.

For instance, Caitlin Johnson is my go-to partner for branding and graphic design. I met Caitlin while we were working on our Masters Degree at the University of Florida. She has an incredible talent for the visual arts, but even more importantly she really has a knack for capturing the essence of a small business. She uses that talent to create amazing brand strategies to drive business goals.

Her husband, Kyle Johnson, has also become a valuable asset as an operations consultant. He served as the company commander in charge of Officer Candidate School for the Army at Ft. Benning. As a veteran, he has a deep understanding of how to plan…and execute business systems.

On the marketing side, I also like to lean on Kate Mrozinski. She brings a wealth of experience running ads for businesses across the US. She’s been an advertising specialist for years, and she has managed thousands of Facebook ad campaigns over her career. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I am honored to have so many resources to draw on to serve our customers.

What Makes RefinerFire Different

For me, service is what matters. I am called to serve others, and I want to help people support their families, their employees, and their communities. Big businesses don’t get that. We see time and again that big businesses that when the choice is between money and people, money usually wins.

That’s why I chose the name RefinerFire. I want to set fire to this impersonal, calculated, and manipulative way of doing business, and I want to help people find the things that are really valuable in life. I want business to be human and personal again. I want the ideals of integrity and love to be reflected in my work.

If you feel the same way and you’re ready to take this journey towards growing your business, you can set up a free consultation to discuss your goals. I look forward to learning more about you and your business.

Take care and God bless.

Have you ever had a slimy feeling after interacting with a company? You can feel that you are just another number to them, and every interaction feels like they’re just digging through your pockets to find your wallet.

Awful right? Good businesses avoid this “ick factor” by getting to know their customers and treating them like actual people.

In our last installment, we talked about how to search for your ideal customers. Today, let’s dig deeper into specific strategies for getting to know our target market segment including marketing persona development.

Current Customers

Before creating a marketing persona, it’s good to look at your current customers. After all, no one knows more about your customers than your customers! Successful businesses create systems for listening to customer input so that it can inform future decision making. We will look closely at these systems in the future, but this can include:

• simple conversations
• customer surveys and interviews
• insider clubs with exclusive perks
• social media polls
• online quizzes
• social media groups

Use Customer Service Tools

You probably also have a treasure trove of information hidden in your current customer interactions. For instance, many CRMs and customer service ticketing solutions allow for tagging. Simply adding descriptive tags to customer records can help you quantify common concerns and find patterns. From their you can proactively address these concerns.

For instance, let’s say you sell t-shirts. You might receive emails for customers asking for returns. As return requests come in, you can tag the messages with the reason for return such as “Poor fit” or “Fabric quality.” Now you have solid information about what matters to your customers to adjust your strategy.

Marketing Personas

Our strategies so far have focused on current customers, but sometimes our current customers are not our ideal customers. This fact will be especially true if you have not engaged in any serious marketing yet. Marketing personas let us bridge this gap by creating a fictional person with all of the traits associated with our ideal client.

Maybe you’re wondering why we bother creating a fictional person instead of just listing out a set of traits. Let me ask you a question though. Should we treat potential customers as people or as checklists? A fictional persona helps us remember that real people are at the heart of every business interaction.

As we plan a marketing strategy, we can imagine how this persona of our target marketing audience would respond to our messaging. We can reflect on how our business fits into their daily life to reach them in the most effective ways. A well done marketing persona can change your whole approach to your business, so let’s start crafting your ideal customer.

Key Considerations for Marketing Persona Development

When selecting a target marketing audience, we mentioned that your audience should:

• Have a problem you can solve
• Be able to afford your solution
• Be large enough to sustain consistent sales

Keep these points in mind as you build your fictional ideal customer. Ultimately, you want to be able to put yourself in the customer’s position and understand:

1. Goals – What are the wants and needs of the customer not being met?
2. Pain Points – What problems will your customer meet when trying to get to their goals?
3. Motivations – What are the underlying factors that made the customer have that goal?
4. Stakes – How important is accomplishing that goal to your customer?
5. Fears – What concerns does your customer have about potential solutions?
6. Values – What is important to your customer in life?
7. Interests – What activities and topics does your customer enjoy?
8. Dislikes – What repulses your customer?
9. Freedom – What outside constraints such as cost might affect your customers decision making?

Sounds like a lot, right? Well, human beings are complex creatures! Don’t worry though. We can start to uncover these major points of the marketing persona by starting small.

Creating a Marketing Persona

Mining the gems of our customer persona starts by digging into small details. First, consider whether you are primarily addressing consumers or businesses. If it’s a business, who would be the primary decision maker at that business? If it’s a consumer, what age range?

Answering one question will often lead to more questions about this person. Soon you will start making connections and discoveries about this customer that lead to important insights. Here are a few details you will want include about your fictional customer:

• Their age
• Their sex
• Their name (make it up!)
• Their hobbies and interests
• Their community
• Their occupation
• Their education level
• Their preferred style
• Their preferred entertainment

Depending on your industry, you can go even deeper. For instance, a restaurant might include their customers’ favorite foods. Even mundane details like the type of car they drive can reveal information about what motivates a person. Go as detailed as you want!

More Marketing Persona Development Tips

Creating a marketing persona can be a great team activity as well. In fact, getting multiple points of view can help you overcome your own blindspots. As a result, you will often get a more accurate understanding when creating a persona as a team. Next week, we will look at ways to use AI in your marketing persona development, too.

Once you have a detailed picture of your customer, you should return to the key considerations we discussed earlier. Use the personal details you’ve brainstorm to understand your ideal customer on a deeper level. Now you’re armed with customer insights to improve your product, create your brand, and plan your marketing.

Until next time, take care and God bless you.

But where do those customers come from? Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at how to establish a marketing system that:

• Brings in a steady flow of potential customers,
• Converts them to paying customers,
• And turns customers into your best salespeople.

But before we can build our ideal marketing system, we need to know who our ideal customer is and how to build a relationship with them. In this guide, we teach you how identify a target market for your small business.

Finding Your Ideal Customers

This fact may surprise you. Building relationships with customers has a lot in common with building other types of personal relationships. Let’s look at how we build personal relationships and apply that to how we build business relationships.

Forming Personal Relationships

Let’s suppose that you move to a new city, and you are trying to make new friends. You could walk down the sidewalk introducing yourself to whoever you happen to pass. Maybe you even up the ante and throw a shirt that says let’s be friends. However, people will probably think you’re weird and you won’t make many friends that way.

You will have more success if you can find people who share your interests. For instance, you might take a photography class or join a gym. Then once you were there, you might introduce yourself to a few people and strike up a conversation.

If you hit it off, you can find ways to stay connected like giving them your phone number or friending them on social media. As you engage more over time, the relationship deepens. Before you know it you’ve scored an BBQ invite.

Creating Customer Relationships

Finding customers is a surprisingly similar process. Many businesses try to reach everybody wth generic messages about their product features. This approach might yield some results, but you will waste a lot of time, money, and effort with the one size fits all approach.

Instead, you want to find smaller groups of people who share a common interest. Then you can talk about what you have in common and build a more authentic relationship with potential customers.

In marketing, we call these smaller groups of people market segments. People in a market segment will tend to have similar interests, values, and goals. As a business, you will want to focus on connecting to specific segments to get the best outcomes.

Choosing a Target Market Segment for Small Business

So that brings us to another problem. How do we choose which market segments to focus on?

The answer will depend on your overall business strategy, but here are a few points to consider.

1. Who has the problem your products solve?

Every product solves some sort of problem for a customer. Sometimes this is not obvious though. For instance, consider the problem solved by a luxury clothing brand. At first glance, it seems like it just solves the problem of what to wear, but any clothing brand could suffice for that problem.

Someone chooses a luxury clothing brand for a particular reason. Maybe they want to send a signal to the world that they have wealth. Maybe they want to fit in, or perhaps they believe that their clothes will last longer if they invest in a luxury brand. These are three distinct problems likely to affect three totally different market segments.

When choosing an audience, your product needs to actually solve their primary problem. For instance, if the customer buys your luxury clothing expecting long-lasting quality, your clothing needs to deliver on that promise or you risk harming your brand reputation.

2. How large is this market segment?

As good people, we want to treat every customer as an individual, but from a practical standpoint we can’t always send perfectly personalized marketing messages. Instead we have to strike a balance in the size of our target market.

If the segment is too large, we waste time and money on addressing people not likely to buy our products anyway and our message gets diluted. If the segment is too small, we reduce our probability of reaching someone ready to buy what we have to offer.

This risk could be offset by creating different messaging for multiple segments, but in reality most small businesses can only effectively market to one core segment because of budget and time. You want to make sure the segment will have enough potential customers to sustain you.

3. Can this market segment afford what I have to sell?

Speaking of budgets…your customers will need to pay you for your product or services to keep your business running. You need to understand the typical financial situations of your target audience to develop a pricing strategy.

If your audience has a restricted budget, you will need to have a higher volume of sales to make up for the lower prices they can afford. Whereas if your customers can afford a higher price, you can get away with a lower volume of sales and smaller audience sizes. Both strategies can be viable options, but you need to know your market.

4. What other companies are trying to reach this same market segment?

Your customer’s time and attention are limited assets, and you are only not the only one who wants to reach them. First, you may have direct competitors selling products similar to yours, but your business also competes with other businesses in industries totally unrelated to yours for attention.

This competition explains why the prices of ads spike every year at the holiday season. Only so many ad placements are available on Facebook or Google searches for everyone, and when demand is high prices go high, too.

This competition also affects your messaging and offer. If you understand the messages your audience already sees, you can plan a strategy to cut through the noise more effectively.

5. Which other market segments will be turned off by messages that appeal to this market segment?

Life is full of choices, and as a business owner, opening the door to some opportunities will shut the door to others. This tradeoff will happen whether you want it to or not. You can either consciously make the choice or let it happen to you.

Just look at Chik-fil-a. While mainstay fast-food restaurants like McDonalds are in decline, Chik-fil-a continues to grow. All this despite continuing to remain closed on Sundays and avoiding the woke policies commonplace in corporate America. They know who supports their business, and the other voices do not matter.

Getting to Know Your Target Market

Once you have narrowed down who you want to address, it is time to get to know them. In the next installment, we will look at a few important strategies for learning about your target customers. Then we’ll use that info to understand how to plan a marketing strategy.

Until next time, take care and God bless you.