4 Tips for Making Your Marketing More Conversational and Personal

Modern consumers want to feel seen and heard by brands. They don’t want to feel like just another buyer. They want their needs to be met (or exceeded) and their wish lists to be granted. They have come to expect a personalized relationship with brands, one that is tailored to their specific needs. 

This is a big ask for brands, especially because personalization has become the norm in marketing today. However, it can lead to a strong relationship with their consumers, generating better retention and loyalty. A personalized approach can be used across marketing channels and tactics — from email marketing to social media to direct mail activations. Here are four tips to ensure your marketing strategy is both conversational and personal. 

1. Know Your Audience 

You can’t be personable if you don’t know your audience. Understanding your audience begins with learning about their demographic traits, including their age, gender, and geographic location. Going beyond this, you’ll also want to identify their needs and wants. You can do this by creating buyer personas to understand better what resonates with them. 

Alongside this, you may also want to gather data from your audience themselves. Surveys, feedback forms, and polls can all be used to gain insights into your audience. This type of data is called zero party data and includes anything that a company collects firsthand. Zero party data can inform marketing tactics or can be utilized within ad units to gather insights directly from the source. For example, a high-impact banner unit with an embedded quiz can ask users about their preferences, purchasing intent, and/or brand perception. 

2. Use Chatbots 

Shoppers today want answers in real time. They don’t want to send an email or have to call a customer service line to get an answer. Chatbots have become the new norm, and many brands are having success with them. These AI-driven marketing tactics can be utilized to automate interactions with potential customers, responding to their queries. They can be appended to a company’s website or social media page. 

Another use case of chatbots for marketing is to share product recommendations. By answering some prompts, a user can find a similar item that they can add to their cart directly from the chatbot. This type of marketing is far more conversational, allowing brands to communicate with customers 24/7. By providing effective, seamless support, chatbots can revolutionize how you do business, create more qualified leads, and convert these leads to paying customers. 

3. Segment Your Email List  

Templated e-newsletters aren’t enticing. Consumers today want brands to speak to their needs directly, meaning they want content to be personal to them. As one of the most effective ways to generate conversions, email marketing is a worthwhile investment. But to be personal, you’ll want to segment your email distribution list based on different factors. You can segment based on geographic location or even by previous open rate. 

Segmenting your list will allow you to create more personal, and therefore more enticing, emails. Make sure the subject line is attractive and compelling, speaking directly to your audience segment. Asking a question or addressing the user by name are two effective tactics. Research shows that using a person’s first name can increase open rates by more than 26%. To go a step further, add a first name to the content of the email to create that personal connection with the consumer. 

4. Be Consistent in Your Voice and Tone

Regardless, if you’re sending an e-newsletter or responding to a follower’s comment on social media, it’s imperative to keep your brand voice and tone in mind. A consistent brand voice and tone establishes authority, builds trust, and helps further engage customers. But voice and tone are not the same. Voice is the brand’s personality and how you create an emotional response; tone conveys the mood and general attitude. While your tone can vary based on the content, your brand voice should remain consistent. 

How you communicate with your customers starts with the language you use. For example, the body and beauty company Dove is known for its powerful, uplifting brand voice. Dove encourages women to embrace their inner beauty and focus on self-empowerment and self-love. The brand has humanized itself through its touching commercials and advertisements, reinforcing its brand values. And because of this, many consumers feel tied to the brand because of its consistent messaging. 

Takeaways

The benefits of a personalized marketing approach are numerous. Personalized marketing can lead to an increase in conversions, better engagement, and increased customer satisfaction. It can also help distinguish yourself from competitors, creating a competitive advantage. The more you can connect with shoppers on an individual level, the more likely they will become loyal followers and customers. 

And thanks to new technology and AI learning, personalization is easier than ever. You can now analyze customer data more easily, gathering important audience insights. These insights can lead to different audience segments or the creation of personas for more niche targeting strategies. AI can also suggest products that a user may be most interested in based on prior browsing history and content consumption. Leveraging these tactics and the aforementioned tips can lead to better marketing campaign performance and overall better customer outcomes.