What do these people have in common? They don’t want to be treated like every other customer.
Individualized marketing is all the rage, with 79% of marketers rating individualized strategies as a high priority for their business in the year ahead.
Putting a personal touch on any marketing strategy sounds time consuming and expensive—but it doesn’t have to be. Much of what makes individualized marketing work is using the tools already at your disposal to glean deeper insights from your customers and prospects. How? Read on.
1. Know Who Your Customers Are
Think of it less as generalization and more like finding commonality. Ask yourself what stresses out your customers? What are their goals and priorities? What time of day are they most likely to browse social sites? Where do they get their news and information?
Whether you dig through existing information or sit down for personal interviews, understanding your customers (beyond why they want and buy your product or service) will give you a roadmap to reaching new markets and forging deeper relationships in the ones you serve.
2. Articulate Your Value
Once you know what your customers want, it’s time to start telling them how you can help meet their objectives. This isn’t an elevator pitch—it’s about providing answers and guidance to questions your customers may not have yet.
Education, awareness, guidance—targeted to the core commonalities of your clients—gives you a reason to reach out and stay top of mind, without having to constantly be selling.
3. Get Permission
The average office worker gets more than 120 emails per day. That’s on top of texts, alerts and phone calls. Very few of us are looking for another distraction.
So how do you ensure your customers and prospects want the information you’re sharing? Ask them! Are they interested in a blog or email because of the tactic? Or because you’re an expert in a certain industry? Do they want more of this type of information? Are they willing to subscribe to your blog or email calendar?
Seth Godin writes that the basic premise of permission marketing is making a promise and then sticking to it. You’ll provide timely information on critical subjects, at a set time, and then—that’s it. You won’t up the frequency at the end of the quarter. You won’t ignore unsubscribe requests when you have a new product to sell. And you definitely won’t sell or share anyone’s information without their permission.
4. Personalize, Automate, Measure, Repeat
If you know who your customers and prospects are, what they care about and how they want to hear from you, the rest should be easy. But finding the time to craft great content, write smart emails, send texts and socialize your offering, when customers want it, can be daunting.
Good automation software can help make sense of all these preferences and handle the scheduling for you. But this isn’t a license to send a blanket message with just a word or two changed to “individualize” the content. If your customers are telling you what they want, it’s on you to give it to them.
Don’t forget to test your approach, keep the quality of your content consistent and try new things. People change. Your marketing will too. But people wanting to be treated as individuals won’t go away anytime soon.
It's important to individualize your content too. Make sure it adds value to your audience so they come back for more. Download our free lead generation guide for more tips:
Let’s Connect
Ready to build, grow, manage and protect your brand? Complete the form below to discuss how we can help.