Personalized digital marketing and ways to excel in it

Digital marketing is the ultimate way to take the brand to the end customer and one of the best ways to excel in digital marketing efforts is personalization. Marketing personalization or personalized marketing is a practice of one-to-one marketing and is used to deliver the messages of the brand, by matching it to the prospect of the individual. This is far different from traditional marketing and works by sending the most relevant message at an ideal time to the right customer.

What is personalized marketing?

The evolving technology and the habits of media consumption of the end consumer have changed the way digital marketers promote their brand. Personalization marketing is the best way for brands to target their end customers in an innovative and meaningful way. Personalized marketing revolves around predicting and delivering what exactly the customer wants.

For example, an e-commerce company can take the information from the order history of the customer and recommend him other products through his personalized mail. They make use of the live browsing activity of the customers and offer them real-time product recommendations through personalization.

Personalized marketing is proving to be a promising way that helps organizations to target their customers in new ways. It plays a major role in advancing customer relationships and levying measurable impact on the business.

Ways to excel in personalized marketing – Strategies for personalized marketing:

There are three strategies of personalized marketing that marketers can make use of to excel in their customized marketing plan.

a. Knowing the needs of the end customer:

The customers expect the marketing firm to know and ascertain their needs. After all, when they type a line in the search bar of the brand’s website, they expect a credible answer in return. They would want all details of the product, both in their online shopping and while shopping in a brick and mortar company. Thus the digital marketers should keep asking themselves what the customer expect from them, at every single point of the sales funnel. They can use surveys and user testing forms to find these answers.

b. Anticipate their future needs:

If you get to know the personal details and the browsing behavior of the clients and if you have the power to predict what follows, then that is the best way to leverage personalized marketing. Send them more content, podcasts, eBooks, etc., on par with their interest. Personalized marketing is similar to playing a game of chess, and as a digital marketer, you have to plan several moves ahead.

c. Make use of consumer data to craft the personalization strategy:

Businesses should make use of customer data platforms and machine learning techniques to craft a personalized marketing strategy. These tools will help in collecting large volumes of data and the relevant analytics to generate customized product recommendations for potential buyers. Digital marketers should also make use of tracking tools and other marketing metrics to derive customer insights.

d. Develop personas for the audience:

The ultimate objective of any personalization marketing is to match people with their relevant content. It also takes into account the messages that different consumers want to receive and the ways to access them. The first and the most important step in personalization marketing is to create a buyer or audience persona and this can be identified by conducting thorough research on the demographic details of the end consumer, the media consumption habits of the buyer, the challenges of the target audience and the opportunities for the business to address the business objectives and issues. After developing the specific audience persona, it becomes easy to create and present the targeted content for them.

e. Market through high-quality content:

Marketing involves a lot of sharing resources, that are relevant for the end audience. Craft marketing material to answer the questions of the potential customers and try solving their problems. Compelling personalized marketing content will help in enhancing the customer experience and improves brand engagement.

Bottom Line:

The ultimate purpose of any personalization effort is to allow the customers to learn that the brand is paying attention to them and is genuinely interested in them. But crafting a personalized digital marketing plan is not an easy task as it includes a lot of planning, careful research, and testing, before leveraging into marketing customization initiatives. The best way to make a personalized digital marketing plan work out is to put oneself in the shoes of the customer and ascertain what would be best for them.