Personalization when implemented correctly, enables brand messaging to break through the cluttered landscape. At a time where consumers are more empowered than ever before, marketers need to be aware of how their content impacts the customer experience. To do this, it is important that to understand what customers want and what kind of content will capture their interest. Giving each customer personalized content shows that you care for your customers and ensures that they are getting exactly what they want from the company.
The rise of personalized content: 71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal. Customers want a personalized experience and they are willing to share the data to enable that experience. Customers actively seek relevant content and 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. Personalization allows them to navigate clutter and focus on the things they would like to discover, read, buy, and so on. It's a lot of wasted time trying to find something buried under 100 things that you don't care much for.
Personalization is good for business. Data and marketing technology now allows for far more personalization than previously possible, personalization makes the marketing funnel more effective and leads to improved conversions. Simply put, it helps sell better, bigger, and smarter. Brands not using personalization will cease to be preferred and will get overshadowed by the competition.
Personalization is a belief one has to commit to it, an average consumer can get more than 10000 messages a day, that's a lot of clutter to breakthrough. Marketers will often counter this by casting a wide net which makes the messaging generic and ineffectual. To personalize the 1st step is to understand your audience and create intelligent personas.
A start point to personalization is to create personas for your target audiences. A persona is a representation of an archetypal user, which can be used as a reference point for design decisions and product features. Personas are often created by combining market research data with qualitative studies, giving them more detail about what this type of customer might want or need. Customized personas allow us to start at the bare basics, demographics, age, etc. Then layer behavioral data on top of that information. This information can come from a variety of sources including your customer databases, digital marketing platforms, and even from 3rd party data. Adding this combined data to AI or big data processing can give a good idea of who your customer is and what they need or require.
Invest in content creation: Understanding the behavior patterns can provide triggers that will make your content more relevant, such that it talks directly to the customer. It is an investment, yes, but the alternate is wasted media spends and a messed-up site cookie pool. The role of content creation in modern marketing is critical. Brands should invest more into media production and publishing to stay relevant in the digital age. With the rise of social media and a range of digital mediums, it's become increasingly difficult for brands to stand out from the noise without creating their own original content. Some major brands are investing millions into blogs, websites, videos, podcasts, and other forms of new media that allow them to communicate with consumers on their own terms
Ecosystems to personalize journeys end-to-end, your customers engage with the brand at multiple touchpoints. Content and the brand experience need to be collaborative and consistent across platforms. A great way to plan this is to create your own ecosystem which is included in the customer experience journey in a meaningful way. Some fitness brands for example have tracking and fitness apps which map personal fitness journeys or goals for their customers and prospects. When such branded platforms offer utility as well as great content it’s a good way to keep customers engaged and build relevance. Branded platforms offer a variety of things for consumers, including exclusive content, behind-the-scenes footage, and more. The goal of these platforms is to engage with the consumer in a different way than traditional advertising does by offering something that has value to them.
Content as a way of problem solving: it’s the sweet spot when content and an owned platform solves a consumer problem. With AI and assistants improving content can be interactive and personalized to solve for specific customer needs. AI assistants with smarts can engage with customers as personal fitness trainers, executive assistants, or a storyteller (if your brand is a book publisher). The important thing is to have a long term plan towards the effort of personalization.
Personalization is the future of digital marketing strategy. It's important to understand that this doesn't mean you need a personal touch for every customer interaction — it means using Content, creativity, technology, and data analytics to create personalized experiences tailored specifically to your customers' needs, interests, and preferences. Personalization may result in having to dust off the existing personas or targeting and focusing more on quality rather than quantity, eg: the number of leads may go down but the quality of what you get will increase consistently as you learn and implement behavior patterns into your user journey. It eventually impacts the bottom line positively. Marketers state that personalization can boost revenues by up to 15%. The future of digital (and all marketing) is personalized, empathetic, conversational but not cluttered.
