Personalization of Brands and Pitfalls

With the widespread shift of customers transitioning to social buying on various digital channels, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

With the widespread shift of customers transitioning to social buying on various digital channels, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Consumers’ expectations of Brands have increased considerably higher than ever. Customers want to feel like brands know who they are and what matters to them. As a result, in order for companies to find themselves in greater demand requires them to level up the marketing strategy, without personalization they can become quite vulnerable to brand switching.

What is personalization of brands? Marketing personalization is a way for businesses to contextualize online mass communications to appeal to the customers’ individual needs. It sets the pace for a one-on-one relationship between your brand and existing or prospective customers. Accordingly, the more a brand builds a mutual relationship of trust with its customers, the more they are likely to patronize it.

Getting it right with personalization, why should brands care?

• 70% of customers say how a brand tailors its experience with them affects their loyalty.
• 71% of the customers get frustrated when a brand offers an impersonal experience-Forbes
• According to Statista, 90% percent of customers shop with brands that offer a personalized experience. Besides, 80% of customers engage with brands that provide personalized messaging.
• A survey conducted by Harvard business review revealed that although people prefer keeping their personal information secure while on the internet, they still value personalized and meaningful marketing experiences.
• According to Accenture, 91% of customers are likely to shop with brands that offer recommendations relevant to them.

Brand personalization revolves around customer experience. It involves creating a communicative strategy that speaks to the individual needs of a customer. Personalization of brands is creating a positive relationship and contextualizing messages and offers according to individual customers. When marketers effectively implement this tactic, it delivers their brand story in an engaging, clear, and concise way. Especially in the height of the pandemic, it skillfully meets the needs of the consumer contactless or curbside purchasing business model.

The shift in the customer buying process

We live in a digital age where most people use their personal devices to make most of their household purchases. This has accelerated further after the outbreak of COVID-19. The adoption of real-time payments is now at its high, recording a growth of 41% since the pandemic hit in 2020 — Amplitude.

Consumer behaviors have since shifted as a majority of work is done remotely. And not just working, we rely on the internet to make even minute decisions like deciding what to eat for lunch.

Interesting, right? Think of a young couple who wants to make a life-changing decision such as purchasing a car. Since there are different car models and car dealers, the couple has to settle for a make or model that suits their needs.

Now think of your experience as a consumer searching on google for a product online. When you are on the brand’s website, do you appreciate seeing exactly what you are looking for with special offers attached to it? How about receiving tailored content related to you and your recent shopping history?

How does personalization increase the buying decision of the consumer?

Customers respond positively when a brand understands and reacts to their needs quickly. Personalizing marketing strategy not only aids in developing a positive relationship with the customers, but it also gives them a sense of belonging. So, then, customers are inclined to transact with brands that offer a more personalized experience than those that do not.

Plainly said, consumers want everything they want in one location. So, in their search for the ideal car, the young couple will make their first stop on the internet. At the same time, it will only help them come to speedy conclusions if they can find personalized information tailored to their needs.

Personalized experiences minimize the work by tailoring the process to fit the buyers’ needs. It will reduce research time in face-to-face negotiations and help them get better and faster deals. Forbes magazine reports that nearly 70% of customers are OK with personalization as long as the brands are using first-party data, rather than buying it from a data warehouse. Besides, most customers want to make transactions remotely anyways. So, personalization ensures the buying process is seamless from the comfort of anywhere in the world.

Types of brand personalization (personalization strategy)

Personalization in social media: Define the identity of new visitors’ behaviors and retarget their interactions with social ads. Social strategy reaches a specific audience and increases the chance of conversions.

Email personalization is possible by segmenting email lists and using machine learning to target marketing messages to the right audiences.

Web page personalization is possible by providing dynamic content, product recommendation, and updates based on the user’s past purchasing history or even location.

Product offers and recommendations — Through the Google Display Network (GDN) feature, brands can speak to the right audience when surfing through websites. It allows Brands to make recommendations based on behavioral targeting, previous website sessions, or real-time user data locative time and day.

The beauty of personalization of brands is using customer data analytics to create or build a long-term relationships with customers.

What are some Personalization mistakes and how to avoid them?

Data is fundamental in the personalization process because businesses usually collect customers’ data such as age and demographics to help promote their personalization brand campaign. Deciding which data to use can be challenging. The wrong execution of this step will lead to a personalization flaw. Data builds the foundation for any marketing strategy roadmap, but Consumer data volume increases and varies daily, making it even more complex to select the best data for personalization.

Instead of relying on a broad data segment, businesses could use multi-dimensional data strategies to select personalization data since not all customers fit in basic market classifications. Having strong brand principles provides the guidance of personalization for business gains that result in an increased number of conversions. Here are some personalization pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Do not cut before measuring the results first

Today customers get email notifications with their assigned names from various businesses. Most of these businesses think that addressing customers by name improves the relationship. Well, does it?. Personalization is not all about customers’ names. Some customers use fake names when signing up for newsletters. The business must establish these facts to avoid falling into this spam trap. Avoid making these assumptions about how it could make a click on a product and leave the landing page. Consumer privacy should be protected. So, in other words, remember to use technical features in the right places, at the right time!.

Businesses should have accurate data and understand customer preferences to avoid this pitfall. Customers have different priorities and do not fit into general categories.

Marketing in real-time

Technology, personalization require real-time tweaking to get the needs of the consumer right and send relevant information. As a result, the business will send personalized ads at the wrong time. Experts synchronize this data with automated advertising platforms and revise the ads on the fly.

Summary

Essentially to ensure personalization is done correctly, incorporate the above mentioned to achieve your goals. Studies show many businesses may not have the expertise in their marketing department to implement personalization. So, outsourcing a marketing consultant as an extension of your marketing strategy campaign is important. A marketing agency will improve your business’s competitive advantage, and have a dedicated marketing purpose, high return on investment, and high efficiency.

Outsourcing a marketing agency, makes your brand stand to gain from a pool of specialized expertise. Not to mention takes the burden off your in-house marketing & sales team, giving them enough time to concentrate on other growth marketing aspects of your brand. Are you looking for the best digital marketing agencies in Ontario? At Creative Bang Lab agency, they offer real-world experiences in a digital age. Get in touch!