You have tried your best with your marketing efforts, but somehow it is still not enough. You feel that your digital marketing strategy is not working the way you want it to work, and now you wish to know what’s wrong with it. If you have already tried to engage your target audience with appealing visuals (you can easily buy amazing images on stock photography websites), you should try to understand what’s missing in your digital marketing strategy.
For instance, many businesses lack personalization in their marketing efforts, which leads to less engagement and might even bring a decrease in sales. In 2020, marketers believe that personalization is the new norm for businesses and the first trend to jump on to help revive your marketing strategy. This article lists the most essential tips on how to personalize your digital marketing efforts and boost your strategy with it.
Research and segment your audience to appeal to them
First and foremost, you need to know your audience before you can take a step towards more personalization. Research on your target audience plays a crucial role in all of your marketing efforts. It can give you an understanding of the demographics, psychographics, and behaviour patterns of your potential clients for better targeting. It can also help you understand how your service or product is useful for your audience, which will help you create a more tailored marketing strategy.
Your audience isn’t homogeneous, which means you can find different preferences amongst your different clients when you do your research. The easiest way to categorize your target audience into specific groups for a more personal approach is to create buyer personas. With that, you can build insights on how to appeal to them.
Segment your social media ads for better targeting
You’ve finished with your buyer personas, and now you should do something with this information, right? You can start with changing your approach to your social media ads to add a human touch to them. Instead of creating one ad for your target audience in its entirety, you should create several ads for different groups within your audience.
You won’t spend your entire marketing budget on that since social media ads are relatively cheap compared to traditional marketing efforts and offline ads. With segmenting your ads, you can be sure that your potential clients are reached with a more personal approach – and the chances that more personal ads will catch their attention increase drastically.
Talk to your audience to learn more about them
Many brands implement personalization by adding a human touch to their content strategy. One of the most effective ways to improve your engagement rates is to change your approach to leading your Instagram account. It’s the social media that lets you talk to your audience and ask them questions in order to appeal to them and engage them with your content.
There are several ways to do that. When you post publications on your feed, you can talk to your audience through your texts. Don’t be afraid to ask questions at the end of the post so that people who have read it can reply. Instagram stories are another great tool to talk to your audience. Instagram itself provides easy templates that boost your engagement. With these tools, you can conduct small surveys, create quizzes, and add a reaction slider to your stories.
Personalize your email marketing efforts
Personalized email marketing has been a trend for several years already. However, in 2020 it is not enough just to learn your customer’s name and use it in the beginning of your emails. You should try to make your emails really personal and insightful so that your marketing efforts are not in vain. Luckily, we live in the digital world, and each year more and more possibilities appear to help you.
You can use the information users leave on your website to analyze it and help you rethink your approach to email marketing. For example, create a short survey form for those who subscribe to your newsletters, asking their names, occupations, and interests. Having this information, you will be able to segment your emails so that they don’t seem mass-sent. And to make people subscribe to your newsletters, you can offer something valuable to them in exchange, such as an ebook, an interesting article, or a personal discount.
Predict the wishes of your clients
It’s always interesting to track what your clients do on your website. Analyzing the online behaviour of your audience can help you in many ways. It will help you understand which sections of your website are more appealing and attractive to users in general. What’s more, seeing what people click on your website will help you offer them new products based on the ones they already looked for – straight away, when they go back to your website, or in an email. That way you will be able to predict your clients’ wishes and offer them something they might need in advance.
This point is slightly harder to implement for small companies and easier for bigger ones. However, regardless of your company’s size, it’s good to try to analyze your users’ activity, especially if you can afford to hire a specialist for it. And if you can’t, you can always use some free tools such as Google Analytics to help you with this.
Pay attention to your copy
Of course, personalization is important, but it won’t work without good copy. That’s why you should pay attention to your texts first and foremost across all your communication. You can appeal with copy in a number of ways – a friendly tone of voice, addressing directly the interests of your clients, or making note of their last activity on your website. And if you combine a personal approach with appealing copy, you can take your digital marketing efforts to the next level.
A good idea is to hire a copywriter or social media manager with good writing skills. Even if your company is small, investment in professional copy that is both valuable to users and engaging will surely boost your marketing efforts. A copywriter can help you find your tone of voice, add a more personal touch to your content, and improve your brand image across many channels.
Conclusion
Nowadays most marketing efforts and budgets go towards digital. Although 4.57 billion people are active internet users as of today, and there are a lot of people who can buy your products online, it’s not so easy to stand out as a brand and appeal to many. It becomes crucial to keep up with the latest marketing trends to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Personalization is a growing marketing trend that can be applied across platforms and different marketing activities. According to Kahuna, 86% of respondents say that personal approach plays an important role in their final decision to purchase a product. This marks the importance of personalizing your marketing to help you improve your business image and consequently generate more sales.