Personalization is becoming an increasingly important part of successful modern marketing. If you are not already using it to promote your bricks and mortar business, it’s time to learn the basics and start using it as part of your marketing mix.
What Is Personalization?
The goal of personalization in marketing is to make your prospective and actual customers feel that you know them and care about them. There are various types of software that can help. It will take some time to set up the personalization, but they are unique ways of forging a relationship with your prospects.
Email Marketing Personalization
Collect their names and email addresses via an email marketing platform such as AWeber.com. Whenever you send an email, use the personalization code in your subject line and in your greeting. This will pull their name into the space, and will make them feel like you know who they are and that you care about them.
Survey Them Regularly
Survey the people on your email marketing list regularly to get ideas about the kind of free and paid content they are looking for, which proposed products or new features for the website they would be interested in, and so on.
Follow Up on Your Survey Results
Once you’ve surveyed them, be sure to follow up by taking action according to what your prospective customers have said they really want. As long as it is in line with your brand, create the kind of content they want. Plan new products that meet the needs of your target audience. This shows you are paying attention and really do care about what they think. It also makes them feel connected with your brand, and likely to buy from you over and over again.
Create a Website They Will Love
Provide the kind of free content and special features at your site or blog that they ask for if you can. This will really help your site stand out in a crowd of niche-related sites. If you are running a WordPress-based site, use plugins to expand your functionality. Adding new features regularly will keep your audience coming back for more.
Send Them Offers They Will Love
Consumers are always interested in saving money. They also love convenience. Their goal in shopping is to transform their lives in some way, such as doing something better, faster, easier or cheaper. They might also be interested in making more money through the products they buy. Offer them genuinely useful products at a competitive price. Create seasonal sales that really speak to their needs.
Bundling is another great way to help your customer. Take the guesswork out of, for example, buying ink cartridges for their color printer by offering a package deal with all the cartridges for one price.
Get Social
Collecting followers on Facebook, Twitter and so on will be a lot easier if you have content that speaks to the needs of your target audience. Even more importantly, you want that content to be shareable, so they will pass it along to family and friends who are also interested in the niche.
Publish a variety of images, videos, and brief written content. Create incentives for people to sign up for your email marketing list, and make them so valuable that your followers will spread the word.
Remarketing
Remarketing through Facebook can target anyone who has visited a certain page at your site but not make a purchase. In your Facebook Ads Manager account, create what is called a pixel. Copy and paste it to the header section of your blog, or the pages of your site you wish to track. The pixel will tag your site visitors and keep showing them the gadget they looked at, for example, until they either buy it or 30 days have passed.
If you’ve ever noticed that some ads seem to “follow” you after you’ve looked at them, those are the wonders of remarketing.
