Why is personalization important in marketing? It’s the best way for a brand to build trust with customers, offer specialized experiences that will stay in a consumer’s mind, and establish strong connections that make you stand out among the competition. This is key to retaining customers and drawing new ones.

It’s a strategy where you analyze data before creating your marketing plan. You’re looking for consumers in the right demographic, buying habits, and interests. Why do this? It’s all about making sure your service or product ends up in the right hands.

The benefits of a personalized marketing experience are clear, but how do you make it happen? How do you customize an experience in such a way that your marketing campaign is reaching your target audience?

Seven Tips for Personalizing Your Marketing Experience

When you’re personalizing a marketing experience, you have to carefully target who to reach and how to reach them. Do this by using seven tips to help promote your brand effectively.

Research Your Ideal Consumer

Do your research and get to know your ideal consumer. One of the most effective ways to do this is by checking out who is drawn to your competition’s social media sites. If your competitor has a lot of college students checking in daily, you’d want to target young adults, but are they in a specific area of the U.S. or are they scattered across the country? Pay attention to little details like this.

Consider this. Three out of four people become frustrated when the content or marketing information they receive doesn’t seem to have anything to do with their beliefs, age, or shopping habits. If you send a sample of cat treats to a person without any pets, you’ve really missed the mark. You need to do your research and make sure the information you have is still valid.

Don’t Overlook the Information on Your Current Customers

Check your brand’s reports and see what information you’ve collected on your current customers and fans. If you notice a lot of new parents buy your brand, you’ll find the age ranges vary, but they’re going to be the same people who frequent parenting groups, watch children’s shows, and read blogs about baby products. If you’re going to do any YouTube or Meta marketing campaigns, parenting videos, children’s shows, and groups with parenting advice are all ideal places for your ads.

Embrace and Share Your Emotional Side

Effective marketing campaigns aren’t afraid to tap into the emotional appeal. If you fully support a particular organization, make sure you talk about it. How do you support that organization? If your brand donates a portion of every sale to a local pet shelter, share that and explain why. You’ll draw consumers with the same passion for animals.

Avoid Creating Pain Points

A pain point is a problem a customer encounters when trying to complete something with your consumer. Have you ever been on a restaurant’s website, seen the “order online” button, clicked it, and had a message appear that the restaurant doesn’t take online orders? It’s frustrating and can negatively impact what a consumer thinks of you.

Another example is more common than it should be. You see an email for customer support and email them. You never hear back. You try again and still don’t hear anything. You finally call and learn that they never check emails. The question arises as to why they even put a website on their “Contact Us” page if they don’t check emails. It’s a major pain point.

Become Interactive

People like to be heard, and that means interacting with your customers. Allow them to engage with your brand on social media, at pop-ups in stores and busy marketplaces, and public events and tradeshows. When you encourage interaction, it helps them feel like they matter, and it’s a good way to gather feedback on what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.

Personalize All Communications

When you email, message, or talk to a customer on the phone, make it personal. Use their name, but never assume gender. Avoid using Mrs., Miss, Mister, Mr., etc. as you may make a mistake that upsets people. Only use titles if you’re absolutely certain you have it right.

Keep your tone personal and not formal. If it sounds overly formal, you lose the chance to connect with them on a friendlier, personal level. 

Establish Incentives That Keep Them Coming Back

People love feeling valued, and a rewards program is great for that. If your loyal shoppers get 10% off on every purchase of $100 or more, they’ll use it. If they get a free item with every 10th order, there’s an incentive to keep making purchases. 

Some retailers offer free items to loyal shoppers who keep leaving reviews of items. That’s another option for personalizing your marketing efforts to the right audience. They’ll spread the word with others, which brings more business your way.

What Are the Seven Ps of Marketing?

It used to be there were four core marketing principles, but it’s been increased to seven. You can also use these to customize a marketing experience. The original four were:

• Product: Your product or service must take priority as it’s what you’re trying to promote.
• Place: Marketing your product has to be focused on the area where your product or service is going to be sold. You might have a wide range if you’re selling online, but heated winter gloves wouldn’t sell well in Southern Florida.
• Price: You do need a pricing strategy to ensure your product or service is going to appeal to consumers. If the price is too much higher than the competition, you need to have a good reason for it. Discounts, sales, and coupon offers need to be considered in your marketing campaign if you want to draw interest.
• Promotion: How are you going to promote your brand’s product or service? Think about email marketing, social media marketing, mailers, and livestreams. 

The three that have been added are:

• People: Who works at your company? They represent your brand, and they can destroy customer confidence. Make sure your workers are well-trained and fit with your brand’s ideals, such as being supportive of environmental causes or knowing they should never talk about the government you’re trying to prevent alienating people based on their political leanings.
• Process: Make sure your product or service is in the customer’s hands on a timely basis. If there are delays, you need to do everything possible to keep customers in the loop.
• Physical Evidence: When customers look for your product, is your branding going to stand out? Have you looked into the colors that appeal to the demographic you’re trying to reach? Are you established online in a way that isn’t making it hard for some to interact? For example, do you have large enough text for someone with poor vision? Are your videos and live-streaming promotions captioned for the hearing impaired? 

You’ve done your research and built a strong team and social media presence, but now what? How do you reach those consumers? An email campaign may not work effectively as spam filters keep unsolicited emails from inboxes. Getting consumers to sign up for newsletters may be more effective, but only if the content matches their needs. 

Be certain to reach your target audience by working with an expert in experiential marketing. You want your consumers to have a positive, unforgettable experience with your brand. Factory 360 makes that happen. Talk to us about your brand, your product or service, and what you hope to achieve and we’ll help you find and reach your target audience.