Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales

1. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales Vivienne K Neale

2. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales Personalisation can’t be ignored Personalisation. Do you get up close and personal with customers and potential customers? Are you using automated responses and a catch all, ‘that will do’ kind of approach? It probably isn’t too much of a shock to know that personalisation is the way forward. Here’s why Does personalisation impact sales? If you personalise your offering at every touch point, wherever practical, you are likely to experience an almost 20% increase in conversions. Not only this but people have a much better experience when they feel that they really matter and they are not just another cog in a business wheel. In fact, if you personalise your homepage you’ll see a difference. Of course, Here’s the thing about reaching repeat customers and finding new customers: What you used to do to achieve your sales and marketing goals doesn’t work anymore. Things aren’t one-size-fits-all, and frankly customers can see through that. They want and feel they deserve outreach that speaks to them—that identifies their needs and wants and helps them get there. To do that, you have to understand more about your customers than their names. You have to understand different segments of their behavior. For example, where a person lives, right down to the area of town and the type of neighbourhood, is one segment of their behaviour, and it impacts their buying decisions. So, too, are their demographics, such as their ethnic group identification, their gender, their marital status, and their family composition. What else impacts the behavioural segmentation, and how can you use those tools to help improve your best practices? This graphic explains it. After all, when people have great experiences and also connected experiences they are much more likely to look favourably on your offering. Click To Tweet They might even become advocates. It might be a one click wonder, or maybe a relationship that’s nurtured before purchase, but personalisation will make a massive difference.  Be useful and don’t be annoying For example there’s nothing more annoying than making a purchase and finding that this product comes back to haunt you. If I’ve just bought a little black dress it’s unlikely I’ll buy another right now. We all know that our intent and our search terms are key to ads that come top of a search. But it really isn’t that straightforward or simple. Neither is it particularly useful to the consumer. The last thing you need to be seen as is an annoyingly buzzing fly or mosquito. Are you offering rehashed static content? Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales

3. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales personalised content offers choice and treats people like real humans – radical huh? Yes, my preferred keywords may well get me to a site that generically hits my search criteria but does it actually fulfil my specific need? Are we just getting rehashed static content? Am I being ‘rewarded’ in any way or being treated like any other browser on a site? If I am looking for something specific like a pink woollen scarf I don’t expect to wind up looking at different types of wool. Excuse me, I am looking for something very specific don’t you know? Different intent requires different outcomes What’s really interesting is that the top of the search results are not necessarily the most relevant. In fact going down the list can get you where you need to be. So there’s a lesson here. Personalisation should offer up just what people are looking for. Think of the frustration when you wind up in a superstore and only want some pasta. Where is it? Can you see the small notifications? Don’t you wish you could be guided straight to it? Of course retailers want to tempt you with lots of goodies on the way but the experience is quite different online. A neighbour said to me, ‘The thing I love about the internet is I find what I want, buy it, then switch off. Whereas if I go to town I spend much more. Interesting. It means different intent requires different outcomes. Personalised content will help you capture that specific intent and make the sale.. Be warned! I am ruthless with spammy emails that are irrelevant to my needs Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales

4. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales What happens when you hire a car to go abroad. For weeks afterwards you’re bombarded by messaging for cars in the same place. Doh, unless I am a business person or have a second home in a specific place how likely am I going to want a car to go back? This is a sure way for your emails to go into spam and the unsubscribe button hit when it lands in my inbox. So what I am really saying here is that context marketing is where it’s at Ive been banging on about how posting a blog is no longer enough. I now want to add that a lack of personalisation and understanding of the customers context is just as bad. So what is context marketing exactly? Alignment Before you do anything get all your ducks in a row, What that means in the personalisation game is that you will have very different digital objectives. They are not the same as strategic digital objectives. What you are doing with digital objectives is finding out just what is needed on each channel and touch point. Different target audiences will lurk on different platforms. Their needs may well be very different. Therefore if you align your messages to each touchpoiint you will definitely affect the type of traffic you attract. There’s no point in having a million views of a tweet if no one is clicking through and ultimately there’s no point in click throughs if people bounce away immediately. Neither is there any point in creating traffic that is not interested I buying. The importance of data Are you actually keeping an eye on your visitors’ behaviour? Are you interpreting your data? After all, there is masses of it washing about that you can tap into (see what I did there? Sorry!) So what the behaviour data says is that people actually have specific intents at different times and you need to be aware of that. When you understand what people want and what their search is asking then you can do your level best to shape the type of experience they have. No more wools and no more redundant car hires please. What kind of data will help you nail context marketing?  Traf?c Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales

5. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales How many ways can you personalise a picnic? It will help you get into the mind of a consumer and make the sale and even up sell. This is the easy one. You can check Google Analytics and grab a ton of information about who is coming to your website, what they are doing, where they come from. That way you can start honing your content to attract the kind of visitor you are looking for. For example if you sell picnic baskets you might want to focus on ways to prevent insects spoiling your picnic or how to treat stings or the best sandwich recipes ever. You can then look at picnic ware, tablecloths, paper napkins etc. and the list goes on. What you are doing is becoming more and more granular but at the same time covering as many topics as possible. Here is your opportunity to be super useful, knowledgeable and the go to source for information. Please note this key takeaway It also gives you lots of opportunity to add this kind of information to your newsletters and emails to give existing customers more value Mobile or desktop? This is what is termed the digital fingerprint. It helps you with geo location whether someone is using a desktop or mobile. This has an impact on the type of content we consume (link) Personalised pro?les Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales

6. Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales This is where you can collate user behaviour, their likes, dislikes, interests. You can see this by their page visits and the conversions. You can design more content to attract them specifically. Actions and interactions Your visitors and customers are taking actions on your site, hopefully. Having studied their likes and dislikes and what they study. Have they clicked on newsletter sign up? You can see how making your offering more personalised start you help building meaningful relationships and improving customer experience. How can VKN Digital help you with personalised content? Hopefully this will help you understand what your customers and potential clients need from you. If you are now panicking about the amount of content and types of content you would have to produce then VKN Digital can help you. We produce different types of content for all kinds of businesses. Check out our writing services. Nothing really phases us. We have a background in research and have highly qualified writers on hand to really squeeze the last drop from your niche and provide granular content if that’s what you need. Contact us today and tick off  ‘personalisation’ on your to do list. Tags: Tags:brand experience, context marketing, importance of data, personalised content, what is context marketing Personalisation and context marketing are key to increased sales