This is the age of the self, of individuality, self-expression, and “personal truth”. Often it is all that matters, and people customize phones, cars, and clothes to their liking and taste. They no longer concern themselves with general ideas or plans, and can not be persuaded by such means, and if you are trying to sell something to them, no matter what it is, you have to make it personal somehow. This has proven incredibly true and advantageous in the world of marketing, built on psychology and understanding the current culture and social reality. The world has become a new playing ground with new rules, and if you want to be successful with your business, you simply cannot keep playing by the old rules hoping they will be enough; you have to adapt, and that is where personalized advertising comes in.
What is It?
Before we can get into how and why personalized advertising is so important to you, we need to establish what it is first. Put simply, it is the process of extracting the data of users, be it geographic, demographic, or behavioral like their search history, and using that data to create ads online that match their specific interests. That is just one method, others include advertising your business to them directly, like with direct mail printing solutions, where you just send personalized postcards to potential customers. There are numerous methods of advertising like this, but they are all built on the same principles of personalized marketing. We are bombarded by so many adverts every single day that we barely even glance at them before skipping or getting annoyed, but no one minds an advert that is relevant or interesting to them, that is just how human nature works. That is where the trick is: getting them adverts that they are interested in.
Data, All the Data
To begin with, you need data. Lots and lots of data, all the data you can gather, and then some. Personalization is only possible because of data, the rich sources, and intelligent analysis tools that carefully sift through it all, correlating, calculating, and suggesting. Your target audience, and potential customers, all matter, and you want to gather all the information and data you can, through social media engagement, clicks on your website, emails, and so on. The more you understand, the more you will be able to strategize. Who they are, what they want, and their preferred ways of communication—every bit of data makes it easier to connect with them and attract them to what you have to offer.
Identify Your Target Audience
This should be done pretty early on in the life of your business, but you want to identify who your ideal customer is, and who you are marketing to, this is critical to develop a marketing strategy. Otherwise, you are just guessing, taking blind shots in the dark. How old is your average customer, what gender are they, what does their income level look like, and where are they most commonly located, every detail builds up an image. If you sell ladies’ coats, for example, you probably will not be focusing much on advertising to men, and instead on women who may have searched for these clothes before, perhaps on your website or somewhere else.
Predictive Personalization
Predictive personalization does what it says on the tin; it predicts customers’ future needs, behaviors, and desires using machine learning and algorithms. This method relies heavily on consumer data to create personalized offers, messages, or products and reach your targeted audiences. You can see what books someone has been interested in recently for example, if they started reading one thriller, then quickly bought and read a couple more, and going off that you can deduce they might be interested in another thriller, and send them some adverts about one of yours.
Create the Content
Before you can personalize your marketing, you need to actually have some marketing, so you start by creating some content first. Here you really have free reign, and your options are vast. Emails, postcards, social media posts, shorts, reels, TikTok, the list of possible ways to reach your audience seemingly grows by the week, you just have to be a little creative, so take advantage of their existence, and utilize them while they are still popular. There are so many companies that have built a genuinely loyal customer base just off clever social media use, of posts and memes and replies, all free to make, that skyrocketed their reputation and popularity. You just need a good social media manager who is with the times and has a keen eye for current events and the internet hivemind. That is easier said than done, of course, but once you have unlocked that door, you really can go far.
Segment Them
Once you have gathered all the data, it helps to segment your audience into different, well, segments, dividing them into distinct groups based on behaviors or characteristics. Once you have them segmented, it is easier to tailor specific marketing strategies for each group, like different ads for men and different ads for women, or perhaps dividing them up by location and showing them products in their area or the like. This is completely at your discretion, and whatever your data analysts tell you.
Personalization Time
Once you have everything sorted, it is time to start personalizing your marketing. Use the names of customers, their purchase history, or other details to craft personal messages and offers that are specific to their interests and needs, subtly forging a deeper connection. Offer them discounts or other incentives to encourage interaction, time-limited deals, or a discount if they subscribe to your newsletter, these are just some of the many ideas and methods used by companies to get more engagement.
Use everything you have learned till now to really craft a marketing strategy that gets to the individual, that is the point of personalized advertising. Once you understand that, the rest quickly falls into place.