Trying to make a connection with customers can be difficult. Creating a targeting “strategy of one” means putting the many layers of credible information you have on an individual to the test.
Are they prone to on-line activity? Do they frequently visit your website? Are they more traditional in their buying habits, using the 800 number to place orders? Do they interact via communities, sharing ideas with peers about your products and services or serving as an advocate providing strong testimonials? Do you have reliable demographics, lifestyle information, and transactional data to include when answering the questions above?
It’s most likely that a marketer today will have a piece of the equation solved, perhaps certain elements can be used to improve response by timing an offer or by sending the proper media or combination of multi channel communiqué. This is fine for executing the communication, the other side of the equation is relating to the person targeted. Personalization in marketing is about making the customer feel like you know them. Targeting to an “audience of one” means you care enough to approach someone with products they want to buy with a message that will appeal to them.
Making a connection to the human element is made easier with proper disclosure. Disclosure of a companies motive will make it easier to trust their marketing message. Disclosure of companies’ environmental practices will make it easier to buy from them. Disclosure of companies’ employment and production practices will make it easier close the sale.
If customers will begin to disclose in return, companies can make the most of it. User generated content is widely accepted as the future of influencing marketing trends. Through viral marketing campaigns executed through social media networks, small to mid-sized businesses can make a big splash without a big expense. But these campaigns won’t get credibility, they won’t be explored and tested if the content used in making decisions isn’t reliable. If consumers hide their motives for a purchase behind security concerns or accept only minimal communication channels because of privacy concerns, companies will have no alternative but to continue mass marketing with minor screening and targeting with little effectiveness.
Disclosure is required on both sides and as it grows both sides should benefit. Consumers will get the best deals from companies that value their business, they will be partners in enhancing a businesses reputation, they will help create new products and solve problems with existing products. Businesses will be able to reduce marketing efforts to those less likely to respond and will be able to focus on producing quality services to customers that they maintain a lasting relationship with over time. Who wouldn’t want to participate in that kind of interaction?
Little Know Tips to Improve Data Hygiene Processing
As the multi-channel marketplace grows in complexity there are a few bedrock principles that continue to make sense.
The mystery of channel preference
It is increasingly more difficult to manage communication with customers and prospects because of the following conditions; new channels are introduced as technology advances, old channels are made obsolete and perceptions change, branding and image are no longer controlled solely by that company or it’s marketing department, and the pace of business in general is accelerating.
Getting “hands on” with today’s marketing efforts
For many years the operations and activities of the catalog marketers have stopped as their data files have been delivered to their services bureaus or printers.
