How do you improve customer experience with targeting? Our guide explains how to use the marketing focus to boost your clients’ experience with you.
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80 percent of customers say that the “experience” that a company offers is just as important as its products and services, according to a Salesforce 2018 report. But what makes a good customer experience? Would the customer like to be surprised or gifted or just want good advice? Probably a little bit of everything, but the fact is, a customer hasn’t wanted to be part of a crowd for a long time.
According to a McKinsey study, 42 percent of respondents believe that most advertising messages still look like mass-produced goods that are not really tailored to them. For you as a company, this means: Individual communication based on data is required to pick up each individual customer in their current life situation.
Steps to improve customer experience with targeting
It all starts with the selection of the target group
The target group describes the totality of all effective or potential people who are to be addressed with a certain marketing activity .
So far so good, but how do you get from the whole to the individual person? This is exactly where the crux lies. Many believe that your target groups are much too large to exclude potential customers out of fear. The result: watered-down and spongy marketing messages. A marketer should always keep in mind that there is no product that appeals to EVERYONE! And so he does himself and his company a greater favor by keeping the target group smaller but more defined. The prerequisite for this is, on the one hand, a 360 ° customer view, that is, a consolidated view of all data sources on the one hand and a good understanding of the customer characteristics on the other. This is the only way you can identify the right selection criteria for your target group and use them for future communications.
Possible selection criteria can be:
- Demographic for private individuals: age, gender, marital status, income etc.
- Psychographically in people: lifestyle, attitude, personality
- Demographic for companies: industry, # employees, turnover
- Psychographically for companies: market presence, corporate culture
- Geographical: ZIP code, streets, federal states, language regions
- Behavior: buying behavior, consumer behavior, channel choice, engagement
With all of these selection criteria, you will find that not all data is available to you. In some cases, especially for demographic or geographic data, it makes sense to use a third party provider of data. On the other hand, access to behavior-related data should be relatively simple based on the individual customer transactions. This data is also particularly suitable for personalizing your advertising.
Why is personalized communication important at all?
- Prevent wastage – because there is no product that is relevant for EVERYONE
- Secure competitive advantages – because you offer a better customer experience than the competition
- Increase customer loyalty and loyalty – because you control tailored offers and thus offer real added value
- Turn customers into fans – because they deliver positive brand experiences at all times
- Focus on the right customers – because you know the value each customer has for your company
- Prevent migration – because you know beforehand who is at risk
- Increase recommendation rate – because your customers are satisfied
- Increase up- and cross-sell potential – because you know beforehand which customer needs which product next
- Acquire new customers – because you know exactly what criteria you have to segment your potential customers with
As you can see, there are several reasons that speak for personalized marketing and that a high degree of personalization and a positive customer experience are directly related.
All of this, however, depends on the correctly selected target group. If this basis is not created, it will be difficult to control relevant communications at the right time. Depending on how many communications you send out and how complex they are, it is also worth considering campaign automation at this point.
