As the Internet continues to grow still, it’s easy to blur customers and businesses together, not putting a face to a name. Yet, that is exactly what not to do if you want to increase your website visits and lead generation goals. Instead, think personalization. What does that mean, though, and how does it impact the way you do business?
In this small business guide to marketing personalization, you’ll learn what it is, why it’s so critical to marketing your business effectively, and how to pull it off without sounding cheesy or too sales-focused. The end result? Improved leads and better brand building.
What Is Marketing Personalization?
Personalized marketing is the method of using analytics to create highly targeted, highly accurate, product and service experiences for your customers with the goal of making them feel unique and important to your business. They’re not just another number for you. It is the process of creating the right message at the right time to spur your customer into taking action.
That sounds easy enough, except that you likely have far too many potential customers out there, and to connect with them, they each may need something different. While that’s more challenging, even a small business with a limited marketing budget can achieve results with the right type and level of help.
How does marketing personalization work?
- Marketing personalization uses information you have about a customer to tailor what you offer to them to meet those needs and expectations.
- You need to understand their preferences, needs, and what motivates them to take action.
- This can be done by segmenting your customers into groups based on demographics and other data, such as their local interests, common problems, or expected goals.
- You then tailor a message for each of these market segments. The result is a very personalized message delivered to your customers that they can resonate with and respond to.
- You build your brand and your customer base using this service.
The key here is that you need to have a means of gathering that information. With highly effective customer research and the development of market data, you can make better decisions that get people to your website or call you for an appointment.
The Importance of Marketing Personalization
Nothing speaks louder than data. To help you see the importance of marketing personalization, consider these stats:
- 80% of customers surveyed in an Epsilon study said they were more likely to purchase from a brand that provided a tailored experience to their needs than one that did not.
- 71% of consumers who responded to a research study from McKinsey said they EXPECT companies to provide this type of highly targeted, personalized service.
- 76% of those customers say that when it doesn’t happen, they get upset.
Personalization is critical in many ways. Not only do customers expect it, but it also does something even more powerful: it creates your brand recognition that is so vital to standing out.
Just like all of those customers that you have trouble putting a face to from around the neighborhood or the industry, the same is true for you. Your customers need to be able to remember you when they need the services you offer. With marketing personalization, you create a mark and leave a memory, and that ends up leading to delivering better results.
Marketing personalization offers numerous benefits to business owners:
- It increases customer loyalty, bringing them back to you time and time again.
- Market research allows you to gain customer insights, allowing you to provide a product or service that is more in line with what your customers need and want.
- It helps to increase your marketing ROI – your money invested in marketing gets you more leads.
- Your customers are more engaged, and that allows you to build a better relationship with them, encouraging that brand recognition that is so critical.
- It drives sales. Simply, personalization creates increased conversions.
There are plenty of reasons to invest in market personalization, but why is it so hard, then, for companies to do?
Key Strategies to Help Improve Marketing Personalization
When you have the right tools and insights available, you can make big, bold decisions that truly deliver results to your company. Take a look at some of the resources that can help you to make marketing personalization more effective:
- Targeting audiences: You will need to segment your customers based on what they are most likely to respond to and need from your business. This allows you to build a better message. You can use this, along with social media, to create very personalized messages.
- Custom content creation: Ultimately, you need to deliver custom content that is unique and engaging to the reader. This is done with data-driven insights and resources for your business so you can better understand its specific needs. Providing customers with information that they actually find useful can be a critical tool in this process.
The key is to pull all of this together to create a cohesive plan. That may sound overwhelming to a small business that needs reliable information that is competitively priced and easy to use. Your time is limited. What can you do? It’s about having the right tools to support you through the challenges.
Overcoming Challenges to Personalizing Your Marketing
As a small business, it can seem like a daunting task to build up marketing campaigns for so many unique consumer needs or to navigate the challenges that you may be facing with knowing what to say or do.
Surefire Local offers the tools and resources to help you launch a marketing personalization campaign that drives results. Take a look.
All-in-one platform
One of the best reasons to use Surefire Local is because everything you need is in one marketing platform. This makes it easy for local businesses to directly achieve their goals without having to pay for and manage multiple apps and tools to do so.
Create local signals
When you implement this tool, you will have a way to establish your online presence by creating local signals across platforms and profiles. This allows you to find new customers in a more effective and efficient way.
You can only personalize messages if you have a true understanding of who your ideal customers are. With Surefire Local, we provide you with a better idea of what your customers are looking for and what their needs are. Specifically, we can help you determine where they are coming from, what they are looking for, and how you can deliver what they need to lock them in.
- We integrate Google Analytics into the platform. This allows you to have a clear understanding of how your customers are reaching your website.
- Marketing analytics and reporting from Surefire Local allow you to understand what your customers are actually looking for. This then allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to be personal to their customer journey.
- With dynamic content creation, from a blog to social media, Google Business Profile, email, text, and other tools all on board, it is easy to create cohesive methods to reach your customers and deliver what they need.
- You get a brand sentiment analysis, a way for you to better understand how your customers view your business. You can use that to help you with branding decision-making as well.
Each one of these strategies is designed to empower the way your business reaches your ideal customer. When you use the Surefire Local platform, you gain access to all of the data and insights you need. This works to alleviate the frustration of trying to create a custom marketing plan to meet personalization goals. It streamlines efforts and delivers results.
What Does Surefire Local Do Differently?
The features of our platform deliver all of the tools small businesses need to create valuable personalization strategies for their customers. This includes:
- Optimizations for your website, including local SEO to help service businesses attract truly local customers and clients.
- Online review management enables your business to build a strong reputation from positive customer reviews, something that today’s consumers value extensively.
- Content marketing tools allow you to create content for your blog, Google Business Profile, social media, and other resources.
- Local online advertising that is within reach of your business – with competitively priced strategies to keep your local ads working for you.
- Educational resources that teach you everything you need to know and have on hand to create truly effective strategies.
All of this, along with social media management tools, directory management, analytics, and reporting, makes it possible for you to create a truly effective and efficient marketing strategy that reaches your customers in a meaningful way.
Personalization means everything to a small business looking to grow. While it may seem like a task that is too time-consuming or costly to take on, that does not have to be the case. With Surefire Local, you have the ability to maximize your ROI and build your brand.
Attend a Surefire Local demo now to find out how.