Apparently Star Wars is a big deal. I wouldn’t know. I don’t like movies in general (why am I sitting here watching a bunch of rich people from Hollywood play pretend?), and the few movies I do like don’t usually involve stars, wars, robots and characters are almost human but not. Our CEO, Adam, however, does like the series. A lot. Him and I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on our preferred entertainment mediums, but we do agree on one thing: He is probably not the only SEO professional who’s a Star Wars fan. So Adam came up with a great idea: Why not create an inbound marketing campaign to recruit fighters for the Rebellion? Although it may not seem like it, I’m the perfect one to take care of this. Why? Because the most realistic scenario of any marketing campaign is that the one running it doesn’t know the client as well as the sales team. Like in any good campaign, I’ll need to conduct research to make this effective.

After doing my research, I found that three of Star Wars’ main characters pretty much sum up the three types of people we SEO companies are targeting. Yes, you may not have ever thought about the fact that Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kanobi have anything to do with search engine optimization, but upon close scientific observation, there’s a lot to learn from their personas. We like to often speak about buyer personas, or fictional character sketches representative of a real-life target audience. What better way to do it than taking a character that has already been created?

Luke Skywalker

Luke is the young guy (or girl) in the office who graduated from college within the past few years, probably has “associate” or “assistant” somewhere in his (or her) job title, and you may have asked them for technological help once or twice. Millennials grew up with social media, and can’t imagine marketing without it- to them, it seems like the only logical way. They’re down for inbound marketing, but they likely don’t have the power to really implement it at their workplaces.

Now take Luke. He wants to leave his old-fashioned hometown of Tatooine, and when the opportunity comes up for him to join the rebellion, he grabs it. However, just like the millennial employee, he’s not very influential, nor experienced. It may not be worthwhile to expend all your energy on this group, but it does pay to create some strong relationships- just as Luke’s determination ended with him defeating the enemy, gaining power and becoming a Jedi master, many entry-level young people have a drive for success, and quickly move up in their companies, or even begin their own businesses. That’s when having solid relationships with them really pays off.

Han Solo

Han Solo fell into working for the Rebellion only to make money, and didn’t originally feel any loyalty to them. Solo is the person at a company in some sort of management position. His or her biggest concern is being able to show the bigwigs at the company that profit is coming in.This person wants to see revenue, and wants to see it quick. On top of that, someone in this position is likely thinks old-school, and probably wants to hold on to the way they’ve always been doing things. Inbound marketing is not a quick fix, and it’s definitely progressive. Improving SEO and building customer relationships takes time, but is worthwhile in the end. However, convincing the Han Solo of this can be difficult. If you are able to prove that inbound marketing really will help by increasing revenue in the long run, it is possible to win the Solo over. However, like Solo, they may prove to be difficult to work with, so just know what you’re getting yourself into!

Obi-Wan Kanobi

Obi-Wan has an illustrious past behind him, but now is lying low and taking on more of a leadership position. However, he knows what needs to be done and strongly supports the Rebellion. Kanobi reminds me of the CEO of any given company. He or she isn’t doing much actively within the company, but oversees everything that is going on. This CEO created the company off of innovation and is open to new ideas. He or she is hard to get ahold of, but if you do manage to get in contact with a Kanobi, he or she will likely be on board. Not reporting to anyone but themselves, the slow but steady growth of inbound marketing won’t stop them from going forward with it.

The lesson I learned? Maybe Star Wars can teach me more than I thought!