Utilize personalization in advertising online.

The current customer experience is way better than it was decades ago. Fortunately, modern technologies have made it possible for businesses to utilize personalization in advertising online and improve their customer experiences. Personalization is a marketing trend that involves creating marketing messages to suit individual customers. This greatly differs from traditional marketing methods, such as billboards and cold calls, which target the general population.

Unfortunately, despite its perceived benefits, more than 74% of digital marketers still struggle with implementing personalization in their marketing strategies. Even worse, 25% of marketers don't even use personalization at all. However, this is what customers want, with more than 80% of customers saying they prefer doing business with companies that offer personalization.

That said, below are some personalization strategies to implement in your online marketing.

1. Use data to improve customer experience

Data is crucial and forms the foundation of personalized online marketing. However, with continuously growing customer and visitor data, most marketers experience infobesity. This is information overload and the inability to choose the right data for marketing goals. Nonetheless, digital marketers should use the available data to create a buyer persona. Use this to enrich your personalization in advertising strategies while improving the customer experience.

However, remember that not all customer and visitors' data is actionable. Below are key data types for a successful personalization;

Obtain accurate data and improve customer experience by using the right tools. For instance, eCommerce personalization software can help gather data about users’ interests and behaviors. This tool also enables you to create detailed data segments and personalize content, product recommendations, and messaging across all customer touchpoints.

Moreover, this personalization tool allows you to run ad experiments and split tests to determine the best ones that can drive more conversions. Unify fragmented data across all digital channels and manage ad personalization efforts from a single location.

Once the marketing team captures the right data, they can easily make better marketing decisions. Thus, allowing them to create personalized experiences, and improve lead scores.

2. Create personalized emails

The best way to succeed in email marketing is to create personalized campaigns, operational messages, and campaigns that suit unique customer needs and interests. If done correctly, personalized emails can generate up to 6 times more click-through rates, 66% conversion rates, and 3800% ROI.

Unfortunately, achieving these figures isn't easy. Especially since prospects and customers in email lists delete nearly half of opened emails within 2 seconds. This is due to irrelevancy. Customers will ignore and delete emails that they deem irrelevant, salesy, or overly pushy. Your email subscribers want relevant content that addresses their pain points.

Personalization can improve your email marketing strategy in many ways. For instance, you can personalize your emails by using their first names, humanizing your communication, and creating content that solves customers' specific problems.

In addition, you can create data-driven email campaigns in minutes using email personalization software. With this personalization tool, you can make your emails unique to build meaningful prospect and customer relationships. Catch your target leads’ attention and establish trust and rapport with customized email subject lines.

Moreover, predictive email personalization software programs are drag-and-drop builders. You can build email content blocks and modify them even after sending them.

3. Create retargeting strategies

Personalization also comes in handy in creating dynamic retargeting strategies. You can create ads that specifically target visitors who check into your website or online platform but don't make a purchase. This is an excellent way to remind customers of their interests and probably convince them to complete the purchase.

You can also target returning customers with personalized ads. Including customer data, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and other past purchase data, in your remarketing list can increase purchases. Returning customers convert easily since they have previously shown interest in your products/services.

This strategy can help you develop customized messages and ad creatives for each intent-based group. But you can’t do it without the right tool. Personalization software can help with this task by providing accurate data on consumer behavior and other information. Moreover, you can enhance customer experience by creating relevant ad content.

4. Create personalized follow-ups

Surprisingly, only one in every 50 sales is made during the first visit. Even then, the person who buys during the first visit has probably already researched the product. The other 49 might not be ready but are potential customers who can buy once you establish a level of trust and do some convincing.

Convincing customers can be hard, given that most sales representatives only make 2 or 3 follow-up attempts. However, personalization can improve your sales team's ability to onboard and close more sales. Insights from prospective customers' behavior, such as events they register, product demo requests, web pages they visit, and more, can help your team create follow-up messages and emails specifically for them.

The Bottom Line

Personalization enables businesses to capitalize on customer data to offer better experiences. If done right, personalization in advertising online can reduce customer acquisition costs by 50%, improve marketing efficiency by 30% and increase revenue by 15%. Start personalizing your marketing today to see the benefits for yourself.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing strategies.

Black Friday is coming soon, and then Cyber Monday quickly follows. Since the two occur on the last weekend of November, in 2021 they will take place on November 26 and November 29, respectively. It's time to think about Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing strategies.

This means that we’re only a few weeks off from arguably the most significant two days in the small business calendar. Last year, businesses generated $9 billion on Black Friday, that’s 21.6% more than in 2019. Meanwhile, Cyber Monday deals earned small businesses over $10.8 billion, a 15% increase from the year before. However, this year could be even bigger.

As more people than ever before are shopping online over instore, experts project record-breaking Thanksgiving sale revenue. Black Friday sales will likely break the $12 billion mark for the first time, while Cyber Monday sales could hit a record $11.8 billion.

These projections point to increasing sales opportunities for small businesses. However, you must be smart as the competition will be stiffer given the strong shift to e-commerce in the past two years. We’ve identified five simple hacks to help you set up for success. Try these ideas to jump-start your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing strategies.

1. Create a masterplan

The first thing you need is a plan that captures your key strategies for the period leading to, during, and immediately after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Although the details are up to you, we recommend that you schedule at least one Black Friday buzz-building campaign. This should include cutdown sales, deals, or specials. Consider using an influencer and micro-influencer engagement strategy to boost word of mouth, and add in post-Cyber Monday deals and campaigns.

2. Start your campaign early

One of the best ways to stay ahead of your competition is to start your marketing early. Our experts recommend buying traffic early (before costs rise) and building social audiences before the competition stiffens. Starting early also increases your chances of staying top of mind throughout the Thanksgiving weekend. Another tip to consider is building anticipation through social media. You should also segment your emails before and during the two days.

3. Fix site performance in advance

Site performance can make or break your Thanksgiving weekend if you’re a small business owner. A reliable site performance guarantees constant traffic and significant sales, however, a slow site can cost you customers. It may even crash before you get to Cyber Monday. So, make sure your website is fast enough, keeping in mind that it can take just a second’s delay to lose 30% of web traffic. Additionally, make sure you optimize your site for mobile searches.

4. Brainstorm high-return strategies

Competing on Black Friday through to Cyber Monday often comes down to savviness. Typically, the smartest businesses will win the traffic. Therefore, you need to begin thinking about some low-cost D-Day strategies with the highest return. Some of the best options that worked in the last two years are;

5. Personalize your campaign

Personalization has become one of the best ways to generate more leads and close sales. According to one Epsilon Marketing study, 80% of customers are more likely to do business with a brand that offers personalized experiences. Detecting their device type to offer a smooth browsing experience, addressing customers by name in email and chats, and awarding discounts based on user profile are some of the best ways to personalize your marketing campaign.

Don’t Forget Post-Sale Services

Ensure a smooth checkout process and make the experience even more satisfying by offering goodies such as free shipping (for selected products) and post-Black Friday/Cyber Monday loyalty points.


Looking for help? Tired and believing there has got to be a better way?

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Perfect Audience - Tool for Retargeting 315

Marketing personalization is a rapidly growing arena in online marketing. This applies to every industry; tech, retail, auto, etc. If you can personalize your marketing to viewers, it builds trust and rapport that can lead to sales and loyalty. According to Forbes, personalization is the key to the future of marketing. And at Entrepreneur, they have outlined in reports that marketing personalization is no longer simply a luxury, but a need.

So what is marketing personalization?  It uses data on the user to then give them a more customized message/experience on the next interaction.  You’ve likely been on a website, and then soon after went to another site and saw an ad from the first site.  That’s an example.  Or maybe you were on a site and filled out a form to get a coupon.  Soon thereafter you received an email with “Hi <your name>, hope that coupon was valuable to you.”  That’s another example of marketing personalization.  It may seem daunting, but there are tools like Perfect Audience that help you accomplish this.

What is Perfect Audience?

As with any other marketing activity, personalization isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are a lot of things to do before your business sounds like a person reaching out to another person in a customized way. For quicker success you need to allow a digital agency to do the work, or you need to use tools that can help you tackle the job.

Perfect Audience is one of those tools.  It’s a self-service software that helps marketers personalize their marketing quickly and easily.  Perfect Audience is part of Marin Software, one of the leading providers of cross-channel advertising solutions in the USA. Marin Software acquired Perfect Audience in 2014.

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What does it do?

Perfect Audience provides marketers with powerful software tools which can be used to gather useful customer data to drive marketing campaigns.

One area where the company excels is retargeting. Retargeting identifies consumers who visit your website and after that follows these consumers around with targeted ads. Whatever websites they visit, your ads can appear on that web page.

Studies show that over 80% of visitors leave your site without making a purchase or contacting you. Retargeting will get your business/brand at the top of their minds by “showing up again for them” so if they decide to purchase at a later date; they’ll remember you and you have a better opportunity that they’ll purchase from you.

Perfect Audience offers 9 different retargeting solutions; mobile app retargeting, cross-device retargeting, partner retargeting, HubSpot retargeting, Twitter retargeting, display retargeting, Facebook Exchange retargeting, and news feed retargeting.  Again, retargeting is targeting a visitor to your website on another platform with an ad after they have visited your website.

Here’s an overview of the Perfect Audience top 3 retargeting services:

What’s the cost?

Perfect Audience's account set-up is free of charge. That alone should be reason enough to try the services. They also offer a 14-day free trial period!

Also, there is a low minimum spend, meaning that you can start off with as little as $5 per day. They bill on a CPM (cost per metric) basis with billing done every Monday for services of the past 7 days.  You can also request a demo to know what exactly you’ll be getting.

Again, Perfect Audience is one of those tools that helps you customize and personalize your marketing.  It’s a key trend to touch base in a more personal way and to follow-up on people that have visited your website.  Are you ready to try more personalization marketing or need someone to do it for you?  Let me know!

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