What is the first thing that comes to your mind when they talk to you about role-playing? Surely you think of dragon and vampire adventures, but although it is a very good form of entertainment, this concept can also be applied to digital marketing.
This digital marketing tool allows you to execute strategies more effectively, since it provides a better knowledge of the customer and, therefore, facilitates the implementation of tactics that are designed directly on the consumer.
Implementing this exercise with your team is the perfect way to highlight the value offer of your brand, since you will be working based on the pain point of the buyer persona to provide them an ideal solution. This will greatly improve your customer service and create a higher retention rate. Remember that knowing and understanding your audience is key to developing working tactics.
What is role-playing?
To explain to you what role-playing is, I am going to use a very simple example: when you were a child and lived adventures through your imagination, you put yourself in the hypothetical role of another person.
You could pretend to be an actor, therefore by being an actor you had to ask yourself: What movie am I acting in? How do I behave in front of the press? What is my favorite genre? How do I react to scandal?
This is what role-playing consists of: putting yourself in the role of another person to simulate different situations and create action plans to respond to them in the most effective way. By applying this tactic in a digital marketing strategy you can obtain information that allows you to implement better ways to interact with the customer.
The objective behind this tool is to adjust the tactics for them to fit different customers and scenarios, by doing this, a customer directed approach can be achieved, the creation of valuable content and it opens up the possibility of validating digital marketing strategies.
5 applications of role-playing in marketing
Role-playing is a tool of great value for those who work in digital marketing, as its versatility makes it applicable in different areas and establish specific objectives according to the scenario that is going to be considered. Learn five ways to use role-playing in your marketing strategy:
- Customer profiling: I have already talked about the importance of deeply knowing your consumer and having a structured buyer persona; role-playing is a fundamental tool to achieve this. Thanks to this, it is possible to understand the needs, desires, challenges and motivations at a better level, in this way you can connect to the customer from empathy to have a better vision of their expectations.
- Message and content development: The perspective that adopting different characters gives you allows the content of your digital assets to be more persuasive and efficient. By executing role-play with this objective an insight can be obtained into how the message will be received, how it would be more attractive, and in general, how to transmit products, services and benefits in a better way.
- Simulations and scenarios: The best way to deal with a situation is by being prepared for it; by means of role-playing different scenarios can be analyzed to give them a timely answer and an adequate solution.
- Validation of strategies: Some marketing tactics, specially the riskiest ones, must be validated before their implementation. Thanks to the different scenarios and approaches that role-playing provides, it is possible to evaluate their effectiveness and adjust them to improve their performance.
- Training and development of skills: The skills of a team can be developed through role-play, since by exposing them to different sales, negotiations, customer service, among other situations, it allows them to have a space to practice and improve their abilities.
Role play in the customer journey
Think carefully about the steps you take when you are going to buy something: first you are aware of the need you have, then you search and compare options, you find a perfect value offer for you and, finally, you make the purchase.
This “journey” is made in each purchase that a user makes, and can last from a few minutes (when you buy something that does not require much dedication) to several months (when you are going to buy a house, car or even study in a university). It is important for the digital marketing experts to take the customer journey into account to develop tactics that impact the user at every step and encourage them to make a purchase decision.
By integrating role-playing with the customer journey, you have the possibility of taking each phase (interest, consideration, onboarding and purchase) to create hypothetical scenarios that study the possible variants within each of the stages.
As a result, there will be an understanding of what goes through the mind of the consumer in a determined phase to be able to take actions that are effective for the moment in which they are.
In this way, effective alternatives can be found to implement retention and cross-selling tactics, which in addition to building customer loyalty, will be reflected in an economic growth of the business.
Working in digital marketing allows us to understand our audience thanks to the metrics that all platforms give to us, but with so many technological advances sometimes we forget something essential: putting ourselves in the shoes of someone else is the best way to understand their needs and act from empathy to provide them a solution.
