Digital Marketing has always been a major tool to reach large audiences, but traditional approaches have caused saturation.
Thus, consumers are increasingly likely to engage in more targeted campaigns, which personalized marketing can offer.
Traditional media such as TV ads, billboards, and other less segmented formats are being rejected. After all, they are often generic and don’t communicate well.
Customers expect offers more aligned with what they consume. Fortunately, over the past few years, this has become possible and has been put into practice, raising standards.
Brands approach their customers by calling them by their names, offering what they want, and making more accurate contact. One main factor has made this possible: data.
By associating it with the customer’s profile, personalized marketing has become an attractive strategy because of the good results it brings. We’ll talk about this, covering the topics:
- What is personalized marketing?
- What are the benefits of this strategy?
- How can brands run personalized marketing?
- How are companies using this strategy?
Keep on reading!
What is personalized marketing?
Personalized marketing is a strategy that helps brands to communicate with individual customers in highly targeted approaches.
Also known as one-to-one marketing, this method has in data its main value. It helps you set each consumer’s profile and target them according to the approach.
As complex and thorough as it may seem, this is one of the most effective ways of performing marketing today. The main reason is the increase in the demand of customers who expect a more personalized relationship.
It’s frustrating and sometimes annoying when uninteresting ads reach the consumer. This targeting problem usually happens in massive campaigns.
The truth is, when not directed with precision, ads can be bad for customer experience. This situation has been recurrent, making marketers seek to optimize the approach process.
The impact of data and analytics in this process
Personalized marketing became possible when marketers realized the power of data. Turning small daily registers into information was the great advance of marketing in recent years.
This analytical work was naturally directed to customer’s behavior and habits. It became possible to analyze, through data, points such as:
- pages a user visited;
- products a customer viewed in a virtual store;
- ads with better engagement or more clicks;
- time spent on specific pages;
- related interests.
Tracking customers’ habits and browsing activity on your social media channels and website has become essential to collect behavioral data.
Then, the analytical work — turning data into information — made it possible to generate more accurate perceptions, including:
- which products a customer was interested in;
- what their interests are when visiting a website;
- what they seek in a market;
- which price range they are interested in;
- the average ticket of a specific customer.
With such accurate information, personalization has become much easier. Consequently, consumer acceptance has been positive, which made this strategy gain relevance.
What are the benefits of this strategy?
Brands can take great advantage of personalized marketing to develop accurate strategies, engage more, and, consequently, generate sales.
The benefits of using these strategies are many, but some are crucial: improving ROI, getting closer to the public, and achieving the expected financial results.
Next, see the main benefits of customizing your brand’s marketing strategies!
More accurate advertising
Ads can be annoying sometimes, and 63% of consumers feel this when approached by generic campaigns.
This means that, instead of generating brand awareness and a desire to buy, your brand is moving away from part of the public.
The only reason for this negative effect is the low level of targeting in broad campaigns. With personalization, the approach is much more accurate and finds the right customer at the proper time.
Accurate advertising engages more, captures a specific prospect for the marketing funnel, and generates a faster conversion.
Besides converting, you can build loyalty. The customer knows that your company delivers what they need, and this is essential for them.
Brand engagement increase
Engagement is a magic word in marketing. In a one-to-one strategy, customers feel understood and treated as a person, not a number.
Personalization is basically what the consumer demands nowadays. The saturation with traditional campaigns has generated the expectation of more personal approaches.
Filling consumers’ needs naturally generate engagement and make people have a good opinion about your brand.
So, customize your approach to engage and keep your customer base closer to your brand. This work produces conversions and fidelity.
ROI optimization
Marketing investments have to be made with accuracy. After all, brands often have a reduced budget, so it’s not interesting to waste money on non-productive strategies.
Campaigns without clear targeting, intended to reach a broad public, show a more significant risk of low conversion. These efforts cost a lot and bring little return, generating a poor ROI.
Optimizing investment return is what every marketing team seeks, and campaign personalization is a great way to improve results.
Investing to capture one prospect at a time costs a lot less, and the chances of success are much higher.
After all, you make a personalized work, approaching each consumer with accurate information about them.
More sales
Sales are a valuable return for a good marketing campaign. Even when selling is not the main strategic goal, it’s always the cycle’s conclusion.
To sell, it’s not enough to have the best price and do advertising to reach a large number of people. It’s necessary to reach who wants to buy and, mainly, who is searching for what you have to sell.
It’s possible to increase the chances of conversion significantly in a one-to-one marketing strategy, doing it in large volume.
If your brand offers to the prospect what they expect, there are greater chances that this process will end in conversions.
How can brands run personalized marketing?
Your brand can use personalized marketing and achieve the best results, but it’s essential to follow some guidelines related to this approach.
Below, check out some techniques to build a personalized campaign capable of generating the expected results.
Track consumer behaviors
Everything prospects and customers do on your website, as well as their interactions in your social media channels, can be tracked.
This helps you understand the behavior of your audience, identifying what they are possibly looking for.
This data may be critical in creating profiles of your consumers, ensuring they are analyzed individually.
In fact, customers know that providing data can help them get personalized offers. That’s why 90% of them agree to provide information that will turn into accurate targeting offers.
By capturing this data, your marketing team can create registers for each prospect, taking the first step to personalization.
Analyze data frequently
All this data needs to be turned into information, which is only possible with effective analysis work. Tools like Google Analytics are essential for this job.
With dashboards customized to meet the marketing team’s needs, it’s possible to perform an accurate and continuous analysis.
Good results depend on how the data is turned into relevant consumer information. This work allows you to target appropriate advertising and generate conversions.
Anticipate customer needs
Suggestions can have a high engagement potential if they are appropriate. The customer’s behavior helps you know them and, with continuous work, make more precise suggestions.
Anticipating these people’s needs is a highly competitive advantage made possible by personalized marketing.
Customers often don’t even know they need a service or product until the offer is made. Anticipating is very valuable when done properly, taking advantage of what you know about the prospect or client.
The audience sees this positively, even expecting such an approach. In 2016, Salesforce research pointed out that 51% of consumers expected that, by 2020, brands would suggest products as a way of anticipating their needs.
How are companies using this strategy?
Case studies always help us to have a more concrete perception of a concept. Some brands are using personalized marketing properly, obtaining outstanding results.
Check out some examples and understand the application of the strategy!
Netflix
Netflix, the streaming giant, personalizes the user experience completely. We are not only talking about recommended TV series and movies but even more interesting details.
If you like a specific actor, the film covers he appears on will be more often on your screen.
The way you browse the platform will also change how the interface design will present itself to you.
Every targeting is based on one thing only: the user behavior on the platform.
Amazon
Amazon employs personalized marketing concepts to generate more accurate product recommendations for its users.
The company applies its analysis of consumer’s preferences and behavior on:
- product suggestions on the homepage;
- suggestions sent by email marketing;
- “customers who bought this item also bought” section.
Spotify
How about discovering new artists within the music genre you listen to the most? That album you couldn’t remember anymore and was suggested in your Spotify home, it was great to hear it, right?
The idea of customizing the platform is offering users songs that they might like. Spotify does this by analyzing their behavior and preferences when they hit “play”.
The Discover Weekly playlist, for example, is the result of everything you’ve listened to recently. The data generated in this behavior helps the platform create a selection of songs that will fit your musical taste.
For better engagement, a closer relationship with the consumer, and more conversions, personalized marketing is an excellent strategy. Thus, brands can achieve a better ROI and even win over more prospects.
Delivering accurate content is also fundamental to attract a qualified audience. Learn how to do this through our complete guide to Content Personalization!
