Last week, we discussed Personalization within the framework of your business. Today, we’re identifying ways to personalize your services for customers/clients. This means treating those you’re contacting as if they’re your only audience (not one of a large group) while showing them that you appreciate their business – even if they haven’t elected to use you yet. Top ways to build a relationship in this respect are learning all about the person you’re addressing and then utilizing personal info (names, preferences) to tailor your advertising to them. And then, once they choose to use you, you can also tailor their experience to fulfill their expectations as well.
- Create personality templates. From the beginning, you don’t necessarily know enough about a person’s preferences to specifically aim your marketing tactics toward him or her. But you can begin by looking at an overview of demographics from previous sales and beginning to come up with profiles about the kind of people who are using your business. You can break this info down into core categories and then target your marketing toward them. For example, Customer A is a Caucasian unmarried male aged 18-35; Customer B is a middle-aged woman with children or grandchildren who she often considers when buying products or services. You can start multiple campaigns that speak to these people as specifically as possible, which is a way of personalizing your marketing without yet having individual information.
- Learn all about your audience. The next thing you want to do is gather as much information as possible from the people who are most likely to use your products or services. You should always have a newsletter/mailing list form on your website so that those who are interested can pass you their data. You can hold a sweepstakes that asks candidates to fill out info about themselves, conduct anonymous polling or solicit voluntary info at point of sale. Ask Mad 4 Marketing about other techniques to gather information and apply it toward your advertising efforts.
- Personalize all forms of contact. Once you have a person’s specific information – based not only on info they’ve provided about themselves but also analytics of their interactions with your brand – you should begin directing your marketing to them specifically. E-mails should incorporate their names. Flyers and mailers should reflect their previous interactions with you and direct them to similar items they might like or need. Be sure to remind them of what they liked in the past about your company. And continuously ask for feedback to learn more about what you can do to improve their experience with your company.
Next week our three-part series concludes with some tips about Transparency.