We all know that personalize marketing has taken the industry by storm. It has been a top tip in digital marketing for better conversions and engagements.
Businesses of all sizes have started using it for its efficiency in making marketing materials relevant and relatable. However, there are still businesses that have yet to integrate this marketing strategy.
This article is perfect if you have yet to use this marketing style. It will discuss the different strategies on how you can make your personalised marketing campaigns a lot more effective.
After reading this, you will have a better idea on how you can further engage your audience and how you can increase your conversions.
So get your notes ready, and let’s get right to the article.
How To Properly Do Personalised Marketing
To make your personalisation efforts worthwhile, take note of the important points below. The strategies here will make your business more efficient. You will enjoy the benefits of personalised marketing, which can help scale your business, convert potential customers, and improve client relationships.
1. Truly Understand Your Market
Understanding one’s market through customer data is the root of all great marketing campaigns. Data collection makes email marketing produce higher open rates, social media content with better engagements, and other relevant content marketing materials very effectively.
The same goes for personalised marketing. You need to go deeper into knowing what your audience wants. Data management and understanding the needs of individual customers are things needed when using personalised marketing strategies.
Understanding customers is important because consumers nowadays are looking for brands that speak to them and understand what they’re going through.
So when studying your market, here are some of the things you should look at:
- Identify their challenges
- What product they want the most
- Buying habits
- Preferred medium
- What marketing style they engage with the best
You can significantly improve your marketing materials by getting the answer to those points.
For example, if your audience responds well to video marketing, you can leverage that fact when you have a new product to promote. You’ll be able to capitalise on video marketing to hook their attention, pique their interest, and try to sell them.
Remember, personalised marketing relates your services and products to your market. If you only promote and talk about you having the best item in the industry, that wouldn’t be very impactful.
But if you point out the different challenges your audience is going through and highlight how your product can help them, then you’ve just made your content a hundred times better.
2. Segment Your Large Market
The data you’ll get above will help in segmenting your market. It will help you create personas and more personalises content per segment in your audience to make your materials more relatable and impactful.
Think about it. You may have a large set of audience composed of men, women, millennials, gen Z, teenagers, adults, and many more. If you create a marketing campaign that targets all of them, your content will be too broad - negatively affecting your retention and conversion.
But if you use personalised marketing and segment your campaigns per demographic, your content will be much more relatable to your audience. It will have more impact and customers will be able to relate more to what you offer.
This benefits your business because your customers will perceive that you understand them. It will make their user experience better which can greatly help with your conversions and sales.
Other ways of segmenting your audience would be:
- Demographics
- Product Interests
- Purchase History
- Buying Behavior
- Geographical Location
- New Customers
- Loyal Brand Advocates
There are a lot of other segments that you can do in your business. You just have to find what are the relevant ones for your industry or operations.
3. Treat Every Marketing Platform Differently
Most businesses forget that they should approach every marketing channel or platform they’re using differently. Companies clearly overlook this because you can often see them copy-paste their content on every platform – the same Facebook post is automatically distributed to their Twitter, Instagram, and other social media accounts.
When aiming for personalisation, you should put in the effort to make different content for every platform. If you’ve started a podcast, your content on Youtube should be differently formatted. This strategy will help significantly improve your conversion, engagements, and relatability.
When curating different content for each social media platform you’re using, make sure to leverage the data you’ve collected. Just change the structure of your content when you’re going for different platforms.
3.a Facebook
For Facebook, you can leverage videos with both long and short-form content. There is a lot of streaming software that is compatible with Facebook as well. These are accepted on the platform, and you’ll see many businesses and personal brands doing this.
When live streaming, you can show behind the scenes of your operations. It will show your customers that you’re a genuine and legitimate business. It’s an excellent way to stand out in your niche.
3.b Instagram
On Instagram, prioritise posting high-quality photos. Instagram is an image-first application. It’s dominated by images coming from personal and business accounts.
Given that every account out there uses images, how can you stand out? One great tip I can give would be to consider using different filters when taking product photos. It will help give out a “fresh look” or enhance the image when your customers scroll the application. It might even get their attention immediately.
3.c Twitter
Twitter is a bit tricky because you’re limited to only using 280 characters. However, there are still creative ways you can leverage on the platform. A tip for Twitter as a brand is to be witty and to use images.
Some businesses tweet recent news and updates in their niche if their audience is active on Twitter. You could be the go-to account when it comes to the latest news on sports technology, the latest medical alert system, and the latest marketing trends.
4. Personalise The Whole Customer Journey
Marketing teams should know that personalisation shouldn’t only be present in content materials. It should be present when you create a website, on your landing page, and even for the check out process. The whole customer journey and every touchpoint should have personalisation elements.
So when you’ve successfully made your target audience visit your product page, you can implement a section dedicated to related products. It’s like a suggestion section on other things they might like.
You’ve seen this used by major companies. An example would be Netflix. When you reach their home page, you see different movies relating to your watch history. Even after you’ve watched a certain film, they suggest another set of movies that you’ll be interested in.
5. Target Your Customers’ Problems And Needs
In personalised marketing, your content should present a solution when you highlight their problems. By knowing your market’s pain points and the challenges they face, you can set up your product in a way that it becomes the solution to their problems.
Just check out what KURU did when they talked about heel pain. When they highlighted such a problem, they also gave a solution: their shoes.
Doing this in your marketing campaigns makes your business and content more relatable to your customers. When you’ve constructed your content properly, your customers will think you know what they’re going through.
Instilling that idea in your market’s head is important because consumers are drawn to businesses that know their challenges and have a solution. When they relate to what the business is saying, they’ll more likely buy or subscribe to it.
It’s no secret that this personalisation strategy works because if it weren’t effective, these global brands would not have implemented it.
6. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made a ton of business processes more manageable. It has introduced marketing automation to businesses. It paved the way for CRMs, algorithms, machine learning, and many more.
This change has helped with marketing, sales, and even human resources. It’s why some companies have invested in hiring application developers to create software tailored to their needs. A good thing for business owners is that AI is also making its way to personalised marketing.
Some businesses have used it in their push notifications. If you’ve received a personalised notification, it feels like receiving a text from a friend. It pushes you to read the whole message.
It’s unlike the traditional marketing message that’s too pushy with selling and converting. An AI set up for personalisation has more intention of helping and suggesting than just trying to make a sale.
Artificial Intelligence is also seen in eCommerce websites. It greatly helps with creating tailored content and suggestions for customers. Having this is important when aiming for a more personalised customer experience because it ensures that every customer will always have a new and fresh personalised experience.
Don’t settle on having AI in only those parts of your business. If you can think of other AI processes to help with personalisation, try to work on that idea. You might be the first one to do it in your industry.
7. Use Relevant News And Information
This is often overlooked when businesses strive to achieve personalisation. By being up-to-date with news and information, you can leverage that with your marketing content. For example, suppose you can read up on fresh news and updates in your niche and use it as marketing content. In that case, your audience will see you as a great authority of information in your industry which helps with your overall business branding. They will always learn something new and original from you.
Using pop culture in your marketing content is a fun way to leverage new information. Remember only to do this when it fits your brand. This is a fun and engaging strategy because pop culture news hooks your audience’s attention immediately.
There are a lot of big businesses that do this so they can rack up massive numbers of engagements and also stay relevant in their industry.
Here are some examples.
7.A KitKat
In 2021, the popular western series “Friends” had a reunion, and the show aired on HBO Max. The series had ten seasons running from 1994 to 2004. It shows how great the show is and the fandom it has.
One particular line popular in the series and the community all know about is “We were on a break.” KitKat took advantage of this pop culture news and leveraged that famous line. This campaign tapped the millions of fans that “Friends” had.
7.B Le Creuset
Le Creuset is a popular french cookware manufacturer. They have loyal customers all around the globe because of the quality of their products.
In 2021, they released the Harry Potter collection, which was a brilliant campaign from them. Why? Because it gives that nostalgic feeling for millennials.
Millennials grew up watching Harry Potter, and they are now at the age of moving out, starting their own lives, or slowly buying things for their kitchen and home. Just check out some of their collection below.
7.c Heineken
The famous Netflix show Squid Game became a household name in pop culture. It has been talked about globally and has been covered by multiple publications. It was a great show that lived up to its hype.
Being pop culture news and a topic always discussed, Heineken did not let this opportunity pass by to be relevant. The show had a famous scene involving the shapes of a circle, triangle, star, and umbrella.
Heineken used those popular sets of shapes to insert their brand in a very witty manner. Check out this intelligent graphic design content they made.
8. Personalise Your Nurturing Efforts
Your personalisation strategy shouldn’t only focus on trying to convert a prospect to a customer. Personalisation should be done in everything your customers are involved in. But applying it in nurturing efforts deserves its section.
Businesses tend to forget to personalise their nurturing strategies after converting their prospects. Some don’t even realise that converting new prospects is much more costly than turning current customers into loyal brand advocates.
Plus, having loyal customers brings a ton of benefits to your business. Here are some of them:
- Word of mouth - People who love your services and products won’t hesitate to talk about it to their friends and family. They’ll even freely make product recommendations for you to their network. That’s the type of genuine marketing you’d like to achieve.
- Great user-generated content - When people love what your business is doing, they won’t hesitate to share their opinion online. This initiative will be an excellent advantage for you because you can leverage it as a form of public trust and brand credibility.
- Better customer engagements - Consumers want to engage with a brand they love. They’ll respond to their content and share it with their friends. It’s a great benefit since your marketing materials will have more exposure and gain better metrics.
- Aids with company growth - When your marketing efforts are on point, it can significantly help your business grow. People would be willing to try out your new products and services. You will have a loyal following as you branch out to other niches. The support you’ll receive here is unmatched.
- Better sales and revenue - Great customer nurturing efforts help with increasing your sales and revenue by creating brand advocates and loyal customers for your business. No matter what products you give out, you will have the support of a loyal customer base.
9. Engage With Customers
Some businesses don’t realise that engaging with customers is a form of personalised marketing – a very effective one as well. This simple act humanises your brand. It makes your customers think that you’re not just purely selling and converting.
When consumers see that you’re also active in the comments section, it entices them to interact with you. They’ll post a comment or question just to be recognised by their favourite brand.
So what type of engagements should you do? Simple engagements can go a long way. No need for over-the-top gestures. A thank you comment is perceived well. A message of “We appreciate you, John!” or along those lines is also good.
These simple messages not only make your business more human but it shows that you’re legitimate and have a great personality. It can help in making customers more confident in doing transactions with you.
Below are some great examples of big brands that engage with their customers excellently.
9.A Starbucks
9.B Spotify
9.C Skyscanner
10. Personalise Your Customer Service
Just like most businesses have dedicated development teams, some have a customer service team dedicated to problems and inquiries. This particular aspect of a business has become so significant that big companies have integrated AI into this process. They have software to call back missed calls, route the customer to the proper web page, and many more.
But the problem is that most companies forget to add a bit of marketing personalisation in this aspect of their business. Having personalisation here can significantly improve your customer relationship. For example, take a look at the flowchart below.
In the example above, you can see how dry customer service is when it doesn’t have any personalisation to it. The customers are faced with only one option regardless of their problem.
This is not the way to serve a customer. When addressing their problem, a business should do everything to solve it. The personalised flow chart is the way to do it. It addresses the customer's name, gives them an option, and presents support personnel when the query is complex.
This is how you should structure your customer service. It shows you’re willing to help and solve the customer’s problem.
Conclusion
As you’ve just read, personalised marketing can be used in any business opportunity. Although it involves a lot of processes and implementation for your business, its benefits can’t be denied.
You can also observe that personalisation isn’t just limited to marketing content; applying it to your customer service and other approaches will still benefit your business.
Integration of everything above can be overwhelming. So it’s wise to start with the first point mentioned here, which is understanding your market deeply. The gathering of data is the root of all successful marketing campaigns and business growth.
Start with that, and you’ll have a solid base when thinking of personalised marketing strategies. If you’re looking to revitalise your business, check out Cloudfusion’s brand design solutions. We will help in adding life to your brand through different branding strategies.
