4 Ways to Make Your Marketing More Personal

By Sarah McInerney
| August 14th 2013

Sarah McInerney

Head of Content

Sarah has almost three decades of experience in crafting compelling, engaging content specifically designed to boost sales and enhance brand loyalty. She’s also an expert in developing unique tone of voice that helps brands connect with their audiences. Her marketing and client service background has given Sarah a natural understanding of how to write content that makes readers take action. Whether it’s signing up to a mailing list, making an enquiry or donation or clicking the buy button, Sarah knows precisely how to convert with words. Pen down, Sarah is a proud member of the Essex Wildlife Trust and spends most of her free time enjoying inspiring walks through her local woodland and nature reserves, admiring everything that flaps, flutters and flowers.

As customers, we all know we feel better valued and understood if the companies we buy from can relate to us in a personal manner. It’s important for businesses to look at all channels of marketing and to see if the target audience is being truly catered for.

Here are 4 opportunities that you can take to reach your target audience in a more personal, targeted way across several different channels.

1. Email Marketing

According to the Lyris Annual Email Optimiser Report, 39% of businesses that segment their email lists experience a higher open rate. Personalising emails should be standard practice. Here are 2 other opportunities:

Previous Purchase

Customers want and expect emails to be targeted according to past purchases, especially if they offer some form of value. Personalising emails and then making recommendations according to previous purchases or viewing history is something that Amazon is particularly good at. By using previous purchase data you can present products and services to customers before they have even had the chance to search for them.

Abandoned Shopping Baskets

If a customer adds something to their shopping bag, whether they fulfilled the purchase or not, there is evidence that they want it. They simply need a little push to complete the order. Abandoned shopping basket emails have a high rate of converting customers, especially if they use a relevant offer.

2. Social Media

It’s important to spend time on social media marketing and catering content to the right people. Customers who engage with companies on social media have a higher propensity to spend more money with them.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is a powerful way to generate marketing leads. By joining and participating in the right type of groups on LinkedIn you can tap into a community that is already predisposed to being interested in your business. You can join groups according to the nature of your industry and the location. The more specific you make it, the better. Once you’ve determined the best groups to join for your business, you can start engaging with the community and position yourself as a thought leader. Create authority by answering people’s questions, posing questions and sharing useful content.

Twitter Hashtags

By using hashtags in your Twitter posts you are increasing your chances of your post being found by your targeted audience. It not only helps to get noticed, but enables your target audience to engage and converse with you.

3. Website Marketing

Offers can be customised according to different types of customer behaviour or according to where the web visitor is in the purchasing sales cycle. For example, a marketing agency may not convert a first time web visitor into signing up to a particular service, but they may act on instructions to download a free e-book or to sign up for an email newsletter.

4. Onsite Testing

By A/B testing your images, wording and calls to action, you can get a better understanding of what appeals most to your target audience and therefore make your website more efficient and personal to your customers.

In conclusion, it’s important to make marketing efforts more personal; your customers will feel more cared for and there will be a higher chance of improving your website’s conversion rate.

For help with personalising your online marketing agency in London, contact us today.