Personalisation in marketing refers to the strategy of tailoring communication and experiences to individual customers. This is done by assessing their preferences, behaviours and past interactions and drives a marketing strategy that is far from the one size fits all approach.

By acknowledging that all of your customers are different, you can enhance their satisfaction and boost loyalty, thus increasing the overall effectiveness of your marketing.

In today’s tech heavy landscape, where customers are often besieged with more emails and messages than they can deal with, personalisation can be the difference between making a sale and losing your customer to one of your competitors.

The Value Of Personalisation For Smes

The beauty of being an SME means that you have the golden opportunity to push the boundaries of your marketing strategies. Unlike larger organisations, the average SME will have closer ties to their customers already, which will allow them to effectively adapt to meet their needs.

By personalising their marketing, an SME can leverage their inherent strengths and achieve an edge over their larger competitors.

Strategies For Personalising Your Marketing

As there is no one size fits all approach to personalisation, your approach will need to be multifaceted. You will need to combine data analysis, technology and a little creativity.

Some practical strategies can include:

  • Data collection and analysis – starting from what you already know about your customers, gather data from social media, your website, and in store. You can then use simple tools such as Google analytics and CRM software to organise this information. Another option would be to survey your customers using tools such as SurveyMonkey or Google forms. These are cost-effective ways to gain customer feedback.
  • Tailoring your communications – using the customer data that you have already gathered and analysed, you can segment your audience. Use this segmented approach to send them targeted emails, based on their customer behaviour, purchase, history, and other preferences. Furthermore, you can tailor your social media to create content that resonates with the various identified segments of your markets. This is something that you should consistently analyse to see what sort of consent is performing best.
  • Customise your offers and recommendations – A loyalty program is a good way of rewarding your customers’ loyalty to your business.  Not only will this encourage repeat business, but it will also help you collect valuable data on their preferences. Add to this an algorithm that suggests products based on past purchases or browsing behaviour, and you can allow your customers to see which products would benefit them best.

Challenges With Personalisation

Personalisation is not without challenge. This is particularly the case for SME with limited resources. It would be wise to consider the following your plan to personalise your marketing:

Respecting customer privacy and data protection – you need to ensure that you are transparent with how you are going to use your customers data. Furthermore, it is vital that you implement security measures to ensure you are compliant with data protection law.

Using resources wisely – if you have a limited budget and few personnel that could be brought on to the team that is in charge of personalisation, take a look at AI tools, and other free tools that will allow you to automate and simplify your marketing tasks.

Personalisation, done right can be a boon to the SME. Is this something you’re considering for your business? Perhaps it should be.