Rule 4: Get in people's heads
Over two-thirds (68%) of customers expect every experience to be personalised. Yet only 42% of marketers know their customer’s demographic information, and even less know what makes them tick.
It encourages old school thinking, where you essentially ‘throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks’ (spoiler alert not a lot). That’s going to waste a lot of time, money, and effort – resources that are scarce.
To engage your market, you need to understand it. And that means investing in getting to know your customers upfront. And not the high-level ‘CIOs in SMEs with 200 seats, headquartered in the UK’. You need to get inside the heads of your customers to find out their pain points, desires, needs, habits and behaviours. For example:
- What are they searching for?
- What’s causing them most pain right now?
- What do they want to achieve?
- Who do they aspire to be?
- Why do they buy?
- When do they buy?
- Who influences their decision?
- Where do they hang out?
- What are their personal values?
This understanding is essential to develop marketing strategies with messages that resonate and drive engagement. Given the option, 80% of customers choose to buy from a brand that tailors the experience. When you know who your customers are, what they want, and how they behave, you can tailor your messaging, positioning, and tactics to meet their specific needs and preferences – and ultimately, that’s going to increase customer satisfaction scores, conversion rates and campaign ROI.
Additionally, you’ll build stronger customer relationships, because you show people you understand and care about their needs. This emotional connection builds trust, making customers more likely to choose your brand over competitors and become long-term advocates.
How to gain a deeper understanding of your customer
In today’s social and hyper-connected world, it’s never been easier to gather rich insights to inform your campaigns. For example, the blog section on a company website gives you an indication of the key themes that matter to the company; LinkedIn is great for senior leader profiling because you can see what topics people are commenting on – and actually read their response; social channels give you insight into what trending and how to hook your customers in.
Once you have a lot of data about your customers, you can start to segment them into like-minded groups – an activity that is known to increase revenue by up to 760%.
There are 4 main ways to segment your audience: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioural. And depending on what the intended outcome of your campaign is, you can keep the parameters broad (e.g. women aged 26-34, based in the south of England) or super niche (e.g. 30-year old women who commute to London while wearing yellow shoes). For example, simple email marketing campaigns that target customers based on their birthday, are known to result in a 481% higher transaction rate, generate 342% more revenue per email, and have a 179% higher unique click rate.
But before you start selling, there’s one more consideration: buyer personas. Even if you’re targeting individuals or micro-organisations, the likelihood is there will be more than one person involved in the decision-making process, such as the budget holder or influencers. The larger the organisation you target is, the more people there are involved in this process.
Again, investing time upfront to understand who these different groups are, what they care about, and what they need to see before giving their stamp of approval, is essential to avoid delays and pushback. Nearly all marketers (96%) say personas increase the likelihood of buyers becoming repeat customers, and 94% say they increase sales. Furthermore, by really understanding your market and customer sentiment, it can help you identify opportunities for growth, because you can anticipate changes and adapt accordingly to ensure your brand remains relevant.
Humanise your connections
It’s a sad truth that just 65% of customers say the content they see from brands feels relatable, particularly when segmentation helps you to personalise your marketing quickly and effectively. Personalisation is a powerful tool for creating connections with your audience. But it’s about much more than writing ‘Dear <Firstname>’ on your emails.
The most effective way to personalise your content is to always say something that matters to the person receiving it. This requires you to hook into their pain points/aspirations, and tell stories that touch people’s hearts, not just the rational side of their minds. Adding personalisation to your assets will take your engagement to the next level.
…but if you really want to give your audience something special (and make your life easier in the process!), why not take advantage of the latest technologies to deliver customised content on a personal level, and at scale.
