3 Tips To Personalize Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Gone are the days when physical locations limited businesses to only target the local market. Thanks to technological advancement, you can target and engage with customers from all over the world. Hence, exploring new markets and expanding your customer base have never been easier, leading to increased sales and revenue.
Despite the benefits of a nearly global customer base, the world of digital marketing is still full of pitfalls. Digital marketing personalization is one of them. Personalization has become a crucial aspect of marketing that can ultimately improve customer experience. Over the years, potential customers have been more likely to choose a business with a personalized marketing strategy. For this reason, ensuring you identify ways you can personalize your marketing effort is critical in improving your customer base.
In this article, you’ll learn about personalized digital marketing. You’ll understand what personalization is in digital marketing, how to personalize your marketing effort, and more.
What Is Personalization In Digital Marketing?
Personalization is understanding the preferences, needs, and expectations of your target audience and ensuring your marketing strategy meets these unique identifiers. In other words, it’s the ability to develop unique customer experiences and messaging according to their previous actions and behaviors, including their purchase history. Personalized digital marketing makes the customers feel your brand cares about them, and your major goal is to ensure they have a positive experience with your business.
Personalizing Your Digital Marketing Strategy
The following are ways you can use to personalize your marketing effort:
- Audience Segmentation
Your business will attract a wide range of customers with different preferences, needs, and expectations. Conducting extensive research to learn more about your customers will help you categorize your audience into groups. Thus, tailoring your marketing effort to meet each group’s interests can become easier.
You segment your target market yourself, but if you have no prior experience, it’s best you work with experts in the field. You can work with digital marketing experts like Clearwater Agency or any other reputable vendor in your area to learn about what they can do to help you target your customers better. However, it’s important to review their background and reputation to avoid wasting resources on a provider that over-promises but under-delivers.
One of the ways you can segment your audience is to understand their position on the purchase cycle. For instance, someone might be looking for solutions to use in the future, while other potential customers might be looking for solutions to use at the moment. Both people are valuable to your business, as they can eventually become part of your customer base. However, due to their position in the purchase cycle, you must personalize your marketing message to both.
- Humanize Your Marketing Strategy
Over the years, utilizing advanced solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI) has made engaging and communicating with potential customers more accessible. Although it can be part of your marketing strategy, your customers still need to experience the human touch.
Using business phone systems and conferencing tools can be an effective way to humanize your marketing strategy. Hence, it’ll be easier for your marketing team to gather crucial information about your customers, such as their hobbies, interests, and other important details. Bringing a human touch will make it easier to forge deeper customer relationships and contribute to a personalized marketing effort.
- Create A Buyer’s Persona
This is another way you can use to personalize your digital marketing strategy. The buyer’s persona represents your target audience at large. Over the years, there have been several ways you can use to build your buyer’s persona. You can even use online tools to help you create a buyer’s persona. With these tools, you can research how the represented audience might react to your product or service with a buyer’s persona.
With a clearer image of the target audience, it’ll be easier to develop a personalized marketing effort, improving the chances of conversion. However, when creating your buyer’s persona, ensure you conduct in-depth research to learn more about your target audience.
What Are The Benefits Of Personalization in Digital Marketing?
The following are the benefits of personalizing your digital marketing:
- Improve Brand Loyalty
When you tailor your marketing effort, your customers will feel your brand cares more about them. Hence, they’re more likely to purchase from your brand more than once. Additionally, they might recommend your brand to their friends, improving revenue and cash flow. Also, personalized digital marketing will ensure you meet their needs and expectations, which can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Optimize Your Marketing
Generally, personalization will improve the success of your marketing efforts. Personalization makes it easier for you to offer what the customer wants long before they request it. Hence, knowing what your customers want ahead of the pack will give you the upper hand over your competition.
Wrapping Up
Personalizing your digital marketing will play a huge role in improving your competitive advantage. The customers will feel your brand cares more about their wellbeing and experience. However, you must conduct extensive research to identify the ideal ways to personalize your digital marketing strategy.
Why You Should Incorporate Personalization into Your Content
In today's competitive world of marketing, content and how it is perceived by the audience is crucial. Unless your content appeals to the audience, your readers are likely to skip your content. Today's world is fast-paced and people do not have the time to go through boring content. Easy-to-read and interesting content can benefit your organization.
Using content that has been specifically tailored for the audience is one approach to stand out from the crowd. Learn how tailoring content may result in more effective, convincing, and relevant material for your target audience, from focused landing pages to customized emails.
What is Personalized Content?
A distinctive, one-of-a-kind experience between a person and your brand is created through personalized content, which makes use of specific information about consumers. Your algorithms can now intuitively determine who is accessing your website, engaging with you on social media, or receiving emails from you thanks to this data.
Every successful company must have a marketing strategy that incorporates personalized content. Through this method, you may boost the possibility that people will interact with your business by providing them with pertinent information and customized content.
Who should Personalize Content?
For every business the goal of their marketing strategy is to reach a wider audience. Every company that uses social media advertising is primarily focusing on personalized content. From personalized emails to even customized landing pages, companies are going all the way to provide the best user experience.
In B2B marketing, companies make use of forms to collect information about potential business clients. Personalized content can be generated if a customer comes from a certain city or sector of the economy. Businesses can build multiple versions of the material and send each recipient tailored content rather than sending one email to all B2B contacts.
Companies who use social media as a part of their marketing strategy are focused on delivering personalized content. Such companies run ads depending on specific demographics.
Any company that wishes to quickly fulfill the expectations of their audience should invest in a good content personalization software.
Types of Personalized Content
Now that you know a little about personalized content and how it is crucial for your organization, let's consider a few types of personalized content used by content specialization software.
Interactive Quizzes
Social media users adore interactive quizzes, which makes them a fantastic tool for content marketing. Personalize the content that is displayed to them with the help of these quizzes' interactive features. By developing entertaining quizzes, even small businesses can increase engagement and leads.
Targeted Ads on Social Media
Delivering personalized content to your audience is now simpler than ever, thanks to social media networks like Facebook. You can boost the messages you post to your profile page to target particular audiences depending on a range of criteria, such as age, gender, location, and particular hobbies.
Trackable Maps
GPS-based map applications can help companies identify users based on their location. Companies can easily identify the specific interests of audiences residing in a particular location. An excellent example of such trackable maps is Google Maps.
Personalized Emails
By categorizing your audience in email marketing, you may send targeted email messages to your subscribers. Customers are more likely to visit your website as a result of this personalized content.
Benefits of Content Personalization
Here's why companies must invest in good content personalization software.
More Engagement
A personalized ad or other forms of personalized content is bound to reach more audience than general content or ads. For example, when a company posts a general ad on social media, it reaches a limited audience. However, if the ad targets the specific client-base, chances are that it will reach more people. It can increase traffic on your website and consequently, increase sales. With the same marketing budget, companies can enrich their advertisement strategy with personalized content.
Efficient use of Marketing Funds
Every company has a fixed budget for different functions such as labor, marketing, advertising, and the like. It is essential for businesses to make the most efficient use of their budget. By personalizing content, companies can reach a wider audience in the same marketing budget. The goal of efficient spending holds for any business, big or small. It is always wiser to invest where you get the most returns.
Cater to the needs of your Customers
Customers have different sets of expectations from companies. As a business, it is extremely beneficial to be able to identify the needs of your customers and address the same. You can meet their expectations and impress clients with your services or products if you already know what your clients want. That is possible through personalized content.
Content Personalization Best Practices
Now that you are aware of the advantages of content personalization, it is time to implement a strategy. Read on to learn some of the best practices for content personalization.
Personalize CTAs
Call-to-action, or CTAs are a crucial part of personalized content marketing strategies. Instead of using generic CTAs like "Click Here" or "Find out More", try using personalized CTAs. For example, if your brand sells women's watches, you can use a CTA like "See more Women's Watches".
Curate a leads list
A good email list contains not only the names and email addresses of leads, but also personal information about them. Companies can categorize potential clients based on this information and develop personal content accordingly.
Be Conversational
People want to be heard. Instead of simply displaying content on your website or social media, use a more interactive approach. Companies can converse with their clients with the help of chat boxes and comment sections.
Personalization is the secret to increasing engagement on your website as content marketing evolves. You are more likely to turn your visitors' browsing into sales if you create content specifically for them. In fact, a lot of customers become irritated if their online experience doesn't represent their interests and are likely to switch to a rival.
Importance of Personalization in eCommerce
Customers have a set of personal criteria they use while making a purchase, and it's extremely important to appeal directly to each one of them. They don’t feel overwhelmed when websites are displaying discounts on products and categories which are not relevant to their needs. As online buyers, they expect offers and discounts that are relevant to their choice of products.
And this is one of the key reasons why the concept of personalization is being adopted by many eCommerce businesses. With this trend, merchants can make their online stores capable of personalizing the content of websites as per their visitors’ interest in real-time. Because most consumers say that they are influenced by eCommerce personalization. And almost 90% of marketers have witnessed an increase in revenues because of eCommerce personalization.
What is Personalization in e-commerce?
When you dynamically change the content of your website with images, products, offers, and other details as per the interest of an individual customer or online visitor, this process is known as personalization in the eCommerce world. Personalization can be based on a customer’s browsing behavior, previous purchases, language, geographic location, and other personal information.
The aim of offering a customized atmosphere for every individual based on their behavioral aspects and their interests is to deliver a unique user experience to them and drive sales through it. This improvisation in the user experience will not only increase the number of online orders, but also helps better product engagement, and increase the duration of the visits.
Successful eCommerce brands know that offering a personalized shopping experience is one of the best ways to make an online customer feel special. Ecommerce personalization allows brands to build stronger customer relationships, encourage loyalty, and enhance trust. Creating a personal connection between your brand and your customer can improve brand perception, increase conversion, and drive repeat sales.
By the way, have you personalized your eCommerce website and marketing campaigns yet? If not, then read out this article, where we’ll dive into the world of ecommerce personalization and highlight the benefits of such a strategy. Also, why it’s important, along with some stats and trends related to eCommerce personalization.
Some Ecommerce Statistics
Some Ecommerce personalization stats:
- 55% of Ecommerce businesses don’t have sufficient data to analyze and provide personalization services.
- 70% of customers give their loyalty only if a company understands their individual needs.
- 59% of customers find it easy to find more interesting products in a personalized store.
- When website content is not personalized, 74% of customers feel frustrated.
- 98% of Marketers agree that on-site personalization helps in advancing customer relationships, while 74% claim that it has a strong impact.
- Customers prefer ecommerce chatbots for a personalized experience, as they have the ability to provide quick replies to simple questions.
- 45% of customers are more likely to shop in a personalized store.
Researchers have labeled Ecommerce personalization as the ‘Top Commerce Technology’, which confirms that Ecommerce personalization in 2022 and in years to come will be a too big thing.
Why is personalization important for retailers and shoppers?
For Retailers:
E-commerce personalization is increasingly important to eCommerce retailers when it comes to customer experience because they have products in large quantities , and it is a must to display each product to its right customer. Otherwise, the product inventory will remain intact without ever reaching the person who needs them.
Ecommerce Personalization helps in providing a unique customized experience to each customer based on their needs and choices and also ensures that the offers or discounts presented to customers are relevant.
Based on some recent research in eCommerce personalization has revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 retailers accept that their customers and online visitors prefer a personalized user experience. So, the duty is on the brand to provide an experience that the customer will want by properly leveraging the customer data. Additionally, brands can drive customer loyalty by anticipating the customer’s needs before they have a chance to express them.
For Online Shoppers:
Online Shoppers have indicated on a regular basis how important personalization is to them. Epsilon research indicates that when brands offer a personalized experience to their customers, 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase. Not to mention the fact that if brands fail to deliver these personalized and tailored experiences to their customers based on their needs and interests than with no time these customers will choose a competitor brand who are better at offering a personalized experience.
Refer to the below image to know what consumers feel if they get the personalized experience from the brands:
Source: Gartner
There are a lot more benefits of personalization in the ecommerce world. Let’s dive into each of them:
What are the benefits of website personalization?
Personalization can be a powerful strategy when used right. Marketers are using this strategy for so long to improve their marketing efforts. In fact, research shows that personalized email campaigns receive 26% higher email open rates and 41% higher click-through rates than ordinary emails.
Let’s find out what are the benefits of eCommerce personalization and why should brands choose to use personalization when selling online products online:
Ease of Use:
Personalized experience allows your customers an opportunity to easily find out what they’ve been looking for.
Enhanced Customer Experience:
Through eCommerce personalization, business owners can provide an enhanced customer experience by laying out personalized web content. Make their shopping experience more enjoyable by providing them with attractive promotions.
Remembering customer preferences, recommending the products they are looking for, storing their payment details for quick access, and updating them on upcoming promotions are some ways personalization improves the customer experience.
Better Understanding of Customers:
Along with the improved customer experience, eCommerce personalization helps you to understand your customers in a better way. To provide a better and personalized experience, brands need to collect customer information. This information can be used to determine which products are in demand, and which ones to stop selling.
Using this data, brands can recommend the right products and provide targeted offers to customers. These recommendations are based upon the browsing behavior and purchase history of the customer himself.
Better Sales Conversions:
If you display customers exactly what they’re looking for before they buy, there is definitely an increase in sales and conversion rates. Ecommerce personalization helps you to recommend products when a customer is about to check out, and showcase products to specific groups of customers who are more likely to buy.
Improved Brand Engagement:
Personalization attracts customers to interact with your brand because you showcase the products they want to see or are more likely to buy. This can improve engagement and the way they choose to interact with your brand.
So, yes. Personalizing your marketing strategy is actually beneficial.
It’s Time To Adopt The Trend Of Ecommerce Personalization
Adopting a new marketing trend is not an easy task because it may come with challenges and barriers that may hinder the overall process, and personalization is no exception to this marketing trend. Let us inform you that personalization isn’t a new concept either, in fact, it has already been a practice in the traditional market. Business Owners have always made an effort to keep a personal touch with their customers and this is the demand of Ecommerce too. As the importance of eCommerce personalization is realized, Ecommerce businesses are already taking measures to enhance their website on the personalization front.
To be a part of a splendid Ecommerce future, personalization is going to play an immensely important role and without its proper use; Ecommerce businesses might fail to know and understand what customers truly want. So all you need to do is a start, even if it’s just a few lines here and there.
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Author Bio: Vishal Lakhani
CEO and Magento Solution Specialist at Rock Technolabs with over 10+ years of experience in eCommerce. Apart from blogging and playing with Magento, he loves to read, travel, and learn new technologies that help make the development process easier and more appealing to clients.
What is Personalized Digital Marketing? 10 Ways to Implement It
Today, we all live in that “Me Culture” where every brand strives to provide a personalized experience. For example; Alexa, Siri, and Google Home are all as intelligent as humans. Based on how we communicate with them, they offer relevant, personalized content.
Nowadays, customers want to be remembered, heard, and understood, and this why brands need to incorporate personalization in their marketing strategy.
What Is Personalization In Digital Marketing?
Personalization is a digital marketing tool or practice of offering a customer experience aligned with the consumer’s preferences and specific needs. It entails making use of the data at your disposal to have a positive experience for your users. It allows you to promote your marketing messages more effectively by using consumer data and reaching out to consumers individually rather than broadcasting a single message to the masses.
Gone are the days when simply calling customers by their first names in your emails was sufficient. You must send customized messages to thousands of customers through various interactions. As a result, you engage with all of your customers on a personal level. In a nutshell, you need to add personalization at size, not just “Personalization”.
Why Should Scaled Personalization Be Important?
Personalization is more than a watchword in the digital marketing arena; it’s what customers expect from their favorite brands. Personalization is essential across the customer lifecycle. Personalization can drive tremendous value, such as 10% to 20% more effective marketing and savings and a 10% to 30% increase in sales and retention (McKinsey).
As a brand, sending a thank-you email or a birthday email goes a long way in strengthening customer relationships and retaining them. Personalization is not limited to emails; brands can even personalize the landing pages and campaigns of the entire website.
How To Get Started With Personalization?
Marketers are well-equipped to build personal and & human interactions for customers, thanks to advancements in technology and analytics. Even though the future of personalization appears bright, most marketers believe they are unprepared to deliver personalized content. To win, companies must develop the requisite skills and adapt to the changes brought on by personalization.
Commitment is one of the essential requirements for establishing a solid personalization operating model. Company executives should prioritize personalization, who should inspire their teams to try, fail, and succeed.
So, where do you begin? Find your answer below:
1. Invest in customer data and analytics: The first step is to collect data, which should be at the forefront of your mind. After prioritizing personalization, you must devise a plan to lay the necessary foundations and organizational capabilities. To unite paid and owned data from various networks, you must establish a centralized customer-data platform (CDP).
However, when looking for a complete 360-degree view of the consumer, businesses should
remember that they can find real value using data they already have. Instead of embarking on a lengthy search for excellence, you can begin with essential details on past behavior.
2. Marketing and IT/Technical teams have to join forces: Coding, configuring analytics software, customizing URLs, and testing does need for data collection. Successful marketers are suffering today because they must contend with the technological aspects of their business.
To build and update the organization’s Martech (Marketing+Technology) roadmap, create use cases, and monitor results, product management teams should include both marketing and IT staff. When customized interactions become more prevalent, cybersecurity systems will need to keep up, and martech architecture will play a critical role in this.
3. Hire advanced talent: Personalizing spaces, times, and habitats necessitate the use of modern skill sets. To convey business insights to stakeholders and deliver data-driven results, marketing teams will need & analytics translators. The demand for AI talent would also rise to fuel innovative problem-solving. Companies that address this need would gain a strategic advantage in creating cutting-edge personalization capabilities.
4. Use Marketing Automation Tool:. Lead nurturing campaigns can get triggered by automation tools based on content interest. For instance, if a lead installs an ebook on a particular topic, you can put it in an email path customized to this message and accept to see some of your content already.
5. Improve training: Companies can enhance preparation for people around the company while developing professional talent for personalization. Call center employees, salesforce, and others, for example, can understand how to use the latest personalization tools to make data-driven decisions and serve customers. Sharing knowledge will be especially critical in improving organizational proficiency.
6. Build agile, cross-functional teams: Scaled personalization would not fit in siloed teams. It necessitates the creation of agile, cross-functional teams dedicated to unique customer segments. These agile teams should adapt fast while focusing on performance assessment, testing success rates, and innovative daring. To stick and scale, all organizational teams must collaborate and solve problems.
7. Respond to Customer Personally on Social Media: Although it might appear that having a live person reacting to customers and prospects on social media is a no-brainer, many businesses automate the method. Consumers are constantly using social media to study products and services, so you must be there when they are. Make sure you track your social media activities regularly (at the very least, including weekends) and that you get prepared to include the most suitable content to satisfy each person’s individual needs.
8. Create Targeted Landing Pages: Personas are also helpful in this situation. You can customize your email messages in the same way as you do your other content types, or if you don’t have the time to do so with all of your personas, you can also build custom landing pages for your different deals.
9. Protect customer privacy: Customers want greater regulatory oversight over data protection in the aftermath of recent data breach events. Marketers find it increasingly difficult to deal with consumer demands, data security flaws, and regulatory oversight. Organizations must go above and beyond to demonstrate that they take data privacy seriously. Organizations may foster data governance by informing consumers of how their data will get used, restricting the processing of personal data to what is required, and enforcing protection systems. Privacy concerns are at the heart of a customer’s relationship with a company. Companies do not include them in their incident management plans.
10. Get started: You have the necessary data, as well as the essential talent and technology. What comes next? Now comes the tricky part: getting created. Most businesses now have enough data and talent to reap the benefits of personalization efforts. Companies should concentrate their agile teams on particular use cases – ideally the low-hanging fruit – and use a test and learn strategy. Using this technique, cross-functional teams will quickly acquire hands-on experience and skills. However, to prepare effectively and make better choices, you must keep your end goal in mind at all times.
Conclusion
When our culture becomes more narcissistic, customers expect valuable personalization from the brands they choose to identify.
Rather than focusing on personalization strategies to increase ROI, marketers should concentrate on learning more about consumer behavior and profile, segmenting this knowledge, and creating opportunities for better communication. Senior leaders in the company should prioritize personalization to ensure success.
If the company’s leaders demonstrate commitment and passion for completing the personalization transformation, team members will be motivated to work toward the common goal.