A successful, personalized advertising campaign requires data. It’s that simple.
Knowing basic but key information about your target audience enables you to customize campaigns, resulting in potentially higher conversion rates and, ultimately, more revenue.
In this post, we’ll look at the importance of developing and launching personalized marketing campaigns using demographics to achieve your marketing goals. We’ll also talk about different ways to gather data and implement them in your campaigns.
Why Personalization Is Important for B2B Marketing Campaigns
Here’s a question: have you ever bought something from a company, website, or brand that doesn’t resonate with you?
No? You’re not alone. People appreciate and respond to personalization because it makes them feel like the brand is treating them as an individual, and not just a number on the bottom line.
From a marketer’s perspective, using personalization as part of their brand’s marketing strategy results in 63% better customer engagement and higher conversions.
Personalization also has benefits outside of the additional conversions and sales it brings. For instance, 90% of consumers are more than happy to share their data with brands to receive exclusive offers for products they’re interested in.
Among the different marketing tactics that employ personalization, email marketing benefits the most. The top three reasons why personalization is prevalent in email marketing is due to an increase in open rates (82%), a higher email click-through rate (75%), and an increase in customer satisfaction (58%).
How to Gather Data from Your Target Audience
Since customer data will form the basis of your marketing strategy and is instrumental for refining your customers’ experience, it’s crucial to implement a variety of methods to collect the right kinds of information.
Collect Website Analytics and Customer Data
First, you should have a target audience in mind. These are the people you want to reach when marketing your products and services.
To get a better idea of who these people are, there are a variety of tools and platforms that can help you gather data on your prospects and determines which among them have the highest chance of becoming in-market buyers. Some tools or platforms—such as Google Trends, Google Analytics, Salesforce, social media analytics, even third-party data provided by firms like the Pew Research Center—can give you basic demographic and audience information, But for deeper insights, including intent signals, technographics, contact details, and more, you’re going to want to work with a service that can provide predictive intent targeting.
Using this information gives you insights into the tech stack your prospects are using and how your business can help them achieve their goals even faster. As a result, you can create a B2B marketing campaign that aims to displace their current providers with your software and services instead.
For those running an e-commerce or SaaS business, you can check the profiles of old and new buyers to view their demographics. You can also run surveys to find out about their experience ordering from your online store or using your tools.
Incentivize Lead Acquisition
Another way to gather data for personalization is lead generation. For example, using a sign-up form on your website asking for the visitor’s name and email address can help you acquire highly qualified leads for your business. Word to the wise: data collection forms are more successful if you offer something of genuine value (downloadable content or an email newsletter, for instance) in return for their information.
These ‘lead magnets’ can take the form of video or written content, and luckily, they’re not all that difficult to create. A 5-minute video or short e-book solving problems that your audience are facing should be enough to capture their attention.
How to Use Data for Personalization in Marketing
A data-driven approach to deliver personalized advertising campaigns allows you to lower the barrier between you and your customers and create an exchange of trust to make the buying experience more authentic. Here’s how:
Develop a More Deliberate Content Strategy
When it comes to personalizing your website, content marketing takes center stage—it can generate three times more leads than outbound marketing at half the cost.
Knowing the needs and wants of your audience, you can create individualized content for each stage of your marketing funnel.
For instance, you can create guides and resources laser-focused on informational keywords in the awareness stage.
For those who aren’t yet committed to purchase, you can build landing pages addressing their concerns, helping to nudge them further down your marketing funnel.
Implement More Effective Email Segmentation
For email marketing, you must segment your leads according to their appropriate stages in your buying cycle. You can then craft a personalized advertising campaign that will help bring them closer to conversion.
For example, for new prospects, send emails that promote your thought leadership content to help them familiarize with your brand, building trust between you both in the process. Remember to invite them to your webinars and any other events that will be of interest to them.
If your prospects demonstrate a willingness to foster a deeper relationship with your brand, they’re then ready to progress to the next stage in your marketing funnel.
Deliver a Positive Customer Experience
Any customer feedback you receive can be used to create materials that address your prospects’ existing concerns and questions.
For example, use customer success stories as case studies. Find current satisfied clients that match the same demographics as your leads. Next, identify a case study that clearly demonstrates how your products or services helped these clients improve their business results.
Sharing these customer testimonials helps to convince prospects that you can achieve the same results for them.
There’s a chance you’ll receive negative feedback too. In this case, use these as opportunities for growth.
Aside from apologizing, you must immediately reach out to these customers, find out why they feel that way, and determine how to resolve the problem. For an example of how to turn negative customer experiences into positive outcomes, check out the brand Zappos.
Solving customer problems speaks volumes about your brand’s character, which doesn’t go unnoticed. By handling negative customer reviews swiftly and with grace, you can increase the chances of them buying from you again.
Take Everything Personally with Your Marketing
If your business is still stuck on marketing initiatives that target everyone with a broad brush, expect to end up with no leads at all.
Creating and launching a marketing campaign using the data available at your fingertips allows you to advertise directly to potential customers. This way, your business can enjoy higher conversions, more sales, and even more repeat customers.
If you still need help gathering data to develop your brand’s personalized advertising campaigns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with your questions. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours with a recommended solution.
