Personalisation in marketing isn't just expected in today's market; it is demanded.
Regardless of whether you own a small brick-and-mortar clothing store, a behind-the-scenes supplier, or a market-leading digital giant, consumers in every capacity demand personalisation.
To back this up, McKinsey found that 76% of shoppers would return to purchase if their experience was personalised, and 78% are more likely to recommend it to family and friends if a company personalised their experience with them.
If you're on the fence about the power of personalisation in growth marketing or want to tweak your social media campaigns or marketing approach completely, you need to get on board with personalisation to support growth and drive sales.
What Is Personalisation in Growth Marketing?
Far from being another buzzword, personalisation is critical to getting the results you want and, more importantly, need from your marketing campaign. It is the process of tailoring your marketing to the needs of your audience. Consumers, regardless of their reason for buying, be it personal or business, want you to be able to fill that void they have, to be relevant and resonate with their individual needs.
You don't want to simply sell them something; you want to provide them with an experience they can't say no to, and you cannot create this without personalisation. If you look at Japanese lifestyle brand Muji: they managed to increase sales by 46% by delivering personalised coupons to shoppers on their website. By analysing the data from customers' search history to tailor what they offered coupons based on the findings. Then, they added additional savings at checkouts to ensure the transaction was completed. If your marketing can speak directly to the individual, you are more likely to experience a greater ROI than pushing out a generic marketing effort.
How Personalisation Differs and Traditional Marketing Differ
Traditional marketing offers a more generalised approach, much like casting your net into the wind, often intrusive and irrelevant. These days, people are far less interested in being disturbed by marketing materials that are simply not relevant to them or are intrusive.
Personalisation removes this blanket message and replaces it with something that interests the individual consumer. Personalisation is driving results not only for Muji but for powerhouses like Amazon and Netflix, who both use algorithms to help them make recommendations on past viewing or purchasing habits to offer suggestions that will be more well-received.
Regular Netflix viewers will be familiar with the "Because you watched ….." section on their home screen, and every Amazon customer has had the email to suggest products to buy based on previous browsing history on the site.
Amazon uses this tactic to increase sales by 25%, while Netflix recommendations based on shows you have been watching help them to increase conversions by 60%. The proof is in the pudding; connecting with your audience on a more direct level in a way that interests them can support growth marketing efforts and elevate your brand, reputation and sales.
The Benefits of Personalisation in Growth Marketing
Increased Engagement
By delivering messages that are not only relevant but tailored to your audience, you can not only create social media posts and content marketing materials that grab their attention but also increase engagement, meaning they are more likely to keep coming back for more. Personalised approaches foster a more genuine relationship and a sense of loyalty to your brand too.
Higher Conversion Rates
If people can easily find what they're looking for thanks to a more personalised approach, they are more likely to convert interest into a sale; it's as simple as that. By being presented with products, services or offers they're actually looking for, you're streamlining the process for them.
Lower costs
Targeting the right audience with the right message allows you to cut waste from your marketing spend and deliver the content in a way that will be more profitable as you're able to focus on the channels or methods that are going to be more effective for you.
Increased Insights
The more personalised your marketing, the greater the insights you will receive into buying habits and reactions to our marketing campaigns, allowing you to delve further into a more specific approach that not only works well for your audience base as a whole but for each person who makes a sale or interacts with your brand.
Achieving Personalisation in Marketing
The best way to achieve greater personalisation is to segment your audience. This allows you to break it down into smaller sub-sections based on different characteristics or patterns and see exactly what you need to focus on for each segment.
You can do this by;
Gathering data: You need to learn their demographics, behaviour, and more, which you can find out using customer surveys, quizzes, web analytics and more.
Identifying key characteristics: Here, you need to define your segments using data such as age, location, income, buying patterns, etc.
Defining each segment: This step requires you to name and describe the segment so you know exactly who you are marketing towards.
Analysing: Moving forward, you need to analyse each segment to get them better and find out where you fit into their journey.
Creating targeted messaging: You need to create your targeted messaging for each segment; it could be creating reels of social media posts that grab their attention, targeted emails, ads or blog posts that resolve their issue, for example.
Testing: Testing is vital. It allows you to see what is working, tweak your approach and refine what you are sending out to get the best results.
Personalisation in growth marketing isn't something you should be dismissing; in fact, it needs to be the driving force behind all of your content marketing, from emails to sponsored ads, social media posts, website messaging and more.
By taking the time to fully understand your audience and learn more about who they are and what they need, you can find your approach and how you resolve their pain points. Personalisation has the power to truly drive growth for businesses of all sizes, regardless of their industry. And by defining your strategy using the latest tools and technology at your disposal, you can create the perfect experience for your audience to help you deliver on your marketing time and time again.