Your team is divided on the target audience's needs. How will you align their contrasting interpretations?

Listen to every perspective with an intent to absorb, understand and appreciate where it germinates from. Once we have the diverging interpretations, pin them against each other and generate support for each within the room. If we pick one interpretation, it is important that we sufficiently explain our reasoning to the one it diverges from. The idea is to collaboratively build, it is possible that we might pick a third direction that is different from both perspectives. Through conversations, we will build out, destroy the old and create anew.

Look for ways to create visibility of the customers needs. Can you bring in a representative of the customers team to demonstrate how they utilize the product and their experience? Are you able to show the ways that the customer saves time or effort by using your product? Sometimes, setting the proper context for the product creates a better understanding.

Create a safe environment where team members are able to voice their perspective and raise any concerns. Use a robust prioritization process that aligns with cascading strategic KPIs and organizational vision and mission to prioritize target audience needs. Focus on those needs and potential concepts to address them, being very careful to preserve additional needs uncovered for future focus. Don't forget to continuously iterate - you may see that some needs can accompany others or that proposed solutions addressing multiple needs become platforms with multiple concept components.

Good insight also comes from bad mistakes often. Sometimes you have to believe in the process and keep an open mind for any information.

It's challenging when teams have contradictory opinions on topics (and both have valid perspectives) - case in point - the needs of the target audience aligned with business goals. I would get the respective opponents to spend a day or week in the lives of their customer or target audience. Gather and report real world observations by engaging and interacting with the potential audiences in order to better understand and service them. When teams have first hand information, they can better prepare buyer personas by uncovering nuances that numbers or data alone cannot provide.

Start with WHY. Why is the task important? Why is it important to align with business goals and objectives? Why is a particular decision is required to be taken? When team members across the board have answers to the WHYs - each team member is able to visualise how their work contributes to the holistic plan. Seeing the big picture helps teams to align easily with the audiences needs.

En este punto tendría cuidado. Muchas veces la definición exacta de un objetivo encorseta nuestras observaciones sobre él, el denominado sesgo de confirmación. Debería establecerse al mismo tiempo que los objetivos delimitaciones en la observación para evitar ese tipo de fallos.

After understanding your audience, revisit your project objectives. Clarify what you're trying to achieve, whether it's increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or improving customer satisfaction. Ensure everyone on the team knows these goals. When team members see how their work connects to these objectives, they better understand their impact on the audience.

Clear goals ensure everyone on the team understands their role in meeting audience needs and achieving business objectives. This alignment fosters a cohesive approach where every team member can contribute effectively, enhancing overall project success and impact. Regularly revisiting and reinforcing these objectives helps maintain focus and adapt strategies as audience preferences and market conditions evolve.

This part about being 'crystal clear' to your internal stakeholders is so important to this process. Having their buy in and allowing their opinion to be heard is vital to success.

Set Common Goals: Establish clear, common objectives that everyone agrees on. By focusing on shared goals, the team can work together more cohesively, despite differing interpretations. Pilot and Test: Implement a pilot project or A/B testing to evaluate which approach best meets the audience's needs. Real-world feedback can clarify the most effective strategy and align the team's efforts. Encourage Flexibility and Compromise: Promote a culture of flexibility and compromise. Encourage team members to be open to adjustments and to find middle ground that integrates various perspectives.

Empathy starts at the head of the teams. If you show empathy, the team leaders tend to mirror that downward. The more each team understands about the "why" of decisions or requests, the better they feel about giving ground. I often ask "How can we do both?" not because I expect to be able to do both, but because it forces conversation about how the competing ideas overlap and/or work together.

Empathy is a game-changer! Host a role-play session where your team experiences your product like your audience. Walking in their shoes unifies your vision and reveals what the audience truly needs. It's easier to advocate for solutions when you've felt their challenges firsthand.

La cuestión es que distintos perfiles pueden estar sesgados por sus propias funciones. Un profesional técnico estará enfocado en una comprensión lógica y uno más comercial en puntos más emocionales. (Dando un ejemplo demasiado simplista, pero creo que se entiende.) Se deben tener en cuenta estos factores condicionantes para garantizar una correcta comprensión.

Fostering empathy within a team is invaluable for understanding and meeting audience needs effectively. Role-playing or simulating the audience's experience can indeed deepen team members' understanding of customer challenges and motivations. By experiencing firsthand what the audience encounters, team members gain insights that go beyond data and statistics, enabling them to advocate for user-centric solutions with greater conviction. This approach not only enhances empathy but also strengthens teamwork and aligns efforts towards delivering solutions that truly resonate with the audience.

A brainstorming session with the team is my go-to approach to ensure we are on the same platform and aligned to the same objectives. We come out of the session with a clear plan of action in hand and each member clearly aware of their role and tasks to be accomplished.

Prioritizing audience needs through democratic voting or structured discussion aligns teams and enhances project focus and relevance.

Beyond Voting: The "Needs Matrix" Voting is a good starting point, but consider creating a "Needs Matrix." This is a grid where you plot audience needs on one axis and their impact on project objectives on the other. Needs that fall high on both axes become top priorities. The Power of "Why" - Revisited! Don't just prioritize needs - understand the "why" behind them. Explore the potential consequences of not addressing each need. This fosters deeper understanding and strengthens the prioritization process. Embrace Healthy Debate: Encourage healthy debate during discussions. Different perspectives can lead to a more well-rounded understanding of audience needs. ioritization decisions.

Always remember, effective prioritization is an ongoing process that requires continuous evaluation and refinement through the product cycle. Depending upon your priorities, establishing a set of criteria to evaluate the same can be considered as one approach. Keeping in mind about the impact and feasibility, for ex :- how well does this specific need align with the overall goals?, encouraging a discussion among peers where each need is evaluated against the criteria etc., will ensure that your project focuses on addressing the most critical needs of your target audience

Compromise and negotiation are key, guided by visual aids like mind maps or flowcharts to clarify connections. This shared vision guides decision-making, fostering team harmony and effective progress.

Me parece muy adecuado la idea de buscar material explicativo visual, permite reducir las opiniones y resultados a simples hechos básicos comprensibles por los distintos perfiles y sus cualidades, y que desde ese punto se comienza a estructurar los resultados.

I have to endorse this strategy because it may be presumptive that the targets’ needs are truly different. The ultimate goal would be to identify common denominator(s) that could help unite rather than separate the audience segments. Well-designed testing could help solve this equation and drive a cohesive campaign that could be both goal and cost-effective

The basic concept behind testing is to gain user feedback to refine your product or services. Most of the times this is achieved by A/B testing, beta testing, MVT, usability testing, etc. The simple logic is to get a data driven approach from these testing which helps you to continuously improve your campaigns. We want more users to give us an honest feedback on how well the product/ landing page is helping them to bring them one step closer to understanding our brand. This in turn will help us to optimize the product or service for a greater success in this digital landscape.

Don’t be afraid to test! Sometimes views on audience need might disagree but ultimately it’s the audience reaction that will reveal which are the right steps to take. Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone and try something bold and original. If it doesn’t work: great. If it works: it will be a great success for everyone.

It's good when you have a team with lots of diverse ideas! Test them and re-test them. Ultimately, every team has a leader and that person will need to make the choice when there's a great divide. Marketing can be very fluid and constantly changing. Know your audience and listen to them so they will want to listen back.

I believe the answer to this question is very simple, A/B testing. Create two ads that address the different needs. See which one resonates with the audience. This could be done by keeping the creative the same and adjusting the copy.