It’s time to employ individualised marketing techniques to remain connected with your customers.
Gone are the days when basic segmentation was all you needed to pinpoint your target audience. Customers are more than age, gender location and income levels neatly filed in your database. You’ve really got to know what your customers want at a binary level.
To grow your business, you need to identify your customers’ preferences and behaviours so you can provide them with the very best experiences which in turn increase their engagement with your business. These days, it’s all about a segment of one.
Mass marketing just doesn’t work like it used to
Today’s customers are more informed and empowered than ever before. And they demand nothing less than personalised, real-time communications. Certainly, a single experience across every touch point is expected.
After all, with the variety of channels consumers use to communicate and interact with businesses, there’s a goldmine of consumer data out there for you to use. Ignoring data from various touch points leaves your business totally in the dark.
By 2018, Gartner predicts that organisations that excel in personalisation will outsell companies that don’t by 20%.
The marketing goal is no longer a straightforward matter of getting people to walk through your door or call your number. It’s actually about attracting the right people with the right offer over the right channel at the right time. All the while personalising the offer at the individual level.
View target customers in a new way
For your business, you should view your target customers as members of digital tribes that expect focused and personalised services based on the characteristics of those tribes.
People are no longer constrained by geographic boundaries. They can connect in a very personal and tailored way with people with similar interests across the world. In doing so, forming digital tribes that hold common interests and beliefs.
Members of digital tribes are defined by who they hang out with on the web or via their mobile devices. A group of people with shared interests in a particular topic or service is much more powerful than simply their demographic group.
Interests give you a much better way to understand who your individual customers are and what they care about most.
Using Facebook
On a practical level, you can start building your own digital tribes on social media. Say you’re a dentist that offers Cerec restorative dentistry. You can use your Facebook page to market to potential patients and customers, by creating and sharing valuable content around while-you-wait crowns.
By being consistent in what you share will give your followers an inside look at what you do, and the relative low cost and convenience of Cerec crowns. You could share valuable news related to the dental industry, customer testimonials, and photos of your practice, with links to blog posts and information about your business and services.
Using Facebook Insights you can see how many Facebook users have “liked” or “followed” your page, the change in “likes” over a period of time and how those users interact with the content. You can use this to determine what type of content works best and what gets people most involved.
This tool can help your dental practice improve your appeal among potential patients and the way you reach and interact with current followers.
Value proposition
So by targeting individuals based on a number of identifiable characteristics and behaviours, rather than targeting a group of people who share similar characteristics, you can present more individualised experiences.
But identifying the right tribes to target is just the beginning. To build a successful business you need to provide value to these tribes and wrap your value propositions within a profitable business model.
By supporting the tribe’s passions, as well as providing a platform for dialogue and interaction between like-minded individuals, you can create digital propositions that will attract digital tribes and build much deeper connection.
Your customers want to connect with others, share experiences and belong to tribes. To get started defining your tribes, you need to:
- Understand your digital value proposition.
- Understand your target audience.
- Find out what tribes value most and then determine an appropriate growth strategy.
