Marketing has always been one of the most important business drivers, but it evolved in the last couple of decades just to grow bigger and more complex. The result is that now you can hardly win over new customers using generic messages, so it’s crucial to tailor offers and personalize content.
By definition, personalization is a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers. The strategy is extremely important since over 60% of consumers expect companies to send personalized offers or discounts based on items they’ve already purchased.
What makes this marketing concept so powerful? It brings businesses a lot of benefits, including these:
- Relationship building: Personalized content allows you to get closer to the consumers and strengthen the bonds between them and your brand.
- Improved customer experience: Tailored offers make customers feel appreciated and satisfied.
- Lead generation: Marketers who customize content can expect to generate more leads than their less agile counterparts.
- Higher conversion rate: The same goes for sales results – personalized offers drive more conversions.
- Customer retention: The last benefit is critical since personalization improves customer loyalty and turns consumers into brand advocates.
Now that you know the basics of personalization in marketing, it is time to see the most effective ways to apply it to your strategy. Here is the list of seven simple tactics:
1. Collect and Analyze Data
If you want to provide consumers with personalized content, you have to collect and analyze customer-related data. It’s the first step you need to take in order to acquire valuable feedback and design a proper strategy. Most marketers do this in three different ways:
- Website analytics reveals user behavior
- Tracking comments coming from social media followers and email subscribers
- Conducting customer surveys and opinion polls
2. Audience Segmentation
Once you get enough material to work with, you can easily segment the audience based on various indicators. This will serve you as the cornerstone for future content creation activities. Our suggestion is to focus on these parameters:
- Age and gender: It’s not the same whether you target teenagers or middle-aged consumers
- Location: You can’t apply the same tactic to local, regional, and global markets
- Education and annual income: Well-educated individuals analyze offers thoroughly and make data-driven decisions
- Online shopping habits: These reflect personal interests of your prospects
3. Segment the Content
Now that you know everything about the target audience, you need to design the corresponding content creation strategy. Vivian Walker, a blogger at Brillassignment.co.uk, says you need to divide content so as to fit the three stages of the sales funnel.
Here’s how she explains it: “Generic content and paid ads are good for users at the top of the sales funnel because they help you to raise awareness. However, the middle part and the bottom of the funnel demand a more customized approach, with tailored content, personalized offers, and free trials.”
4. Personalize Emails
Although being one of the oldest channels of digital marketing, email campaigns still play a major role in contemporary business. According to the reports, personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates. For this reason, you also need to personalize emails to make the most of your marketing strategy.
5. Engage on Social Media
Another way to use personalization is to engage on social media and establish regular communication with your followers. The goal is to humanize the business by using the same style and tone of voice, letting the world know there are some real people working behind the curtain. It will help you to make the audience feel acknowledged and to strengthen relationships with the regular commentators.
6. Improve Customer Service
Every business must try to improve customer service and allow consumers to express opinions or send inquiries around the clock. What makes this process so important? First of all, high-quality customer service proves the credibility of your organization.
Besides that, you can use the history of customer interaction to personalize communication with your clients and anticipate their future needs. Luckily enough, there are all sorts of customer relationship management tools that can assist you in this process, so you can utilize these platforms to automate most of the work.
7. Measure Results
Customer personalization can only get you so far if you don’t measure the results of your marketing strategy. Therefore, you must keep an eye on all activities to detect both the good sides and pain points. Doing so, you will be able to improve or eliminate weak spots from your strategy and put an emphasis on content that already proved to be successful.
Conclusion
Personalization in marketing is not only an option anymore but rather a full-time necessity. Gone are the days when you could just make “one size fits all” content and expect people to show interest in your products or services. On the contrary, everything you do needs to be tailored so as to fit the need of the target group.
This post described seven simple tactics for customer personalization to boost your marketing strategy. We encourage you to spend some time testing these hacks and find options that perfectly suit your business requirements – it will bring you tons of new leads and drive conversions in the long run.
About the Author:
Scott Matthews is a professional content writer in such topics as a business relationship, SEO and digital marketing. Scott`s the biggest passion is blogging and traveling. He regularly takes part in different career growth conferences and contributes his posts to different websites. Contact him on Facebook and Twitter.