2019 Digital Marketing Trends Part 2: Personalized Marketing – It’s All About Me

Did you miss Part 1 of this series? Catch up here (then come back and read part 2!)

How many of us have bought a bottle of Coke for ourselves or someone else because it had our name on it? Or click “add to cart” on Amazon after reading “other products you may like”? Or purchased an item because we saw ads for it enough times it finally made us get out our wallet? All these are examples of personalized marketing that we as consumers have experienced.

But how can we use personalized marketing from a B2B standpoint? Today it is crucial to make your ads stand out and directly relate to your audience. Here are a few ideas on how to get there:

Email Drip Campaigns

These campaigns can be powerful when done correctly. You know which products or services your customers are interested in, so why not give them all of the information they need to know? Some purchasing decisions can take months, even years, to complete. While your prospect is out shopping the competition, stay top of mind by serving them useful information during their decision process. Segment your lists, create some content, and go!

Remarketing

Have you ever gone to a website only to see their ad on LinkedIn or YouTube hours later? That’s remarketing. Remarketing can be used to stay top of mind and push prospects down the funnel. There are countless ways to segment your remarketing lists and serve highly relevant ads to those already familiar with your business.

Account Based Marketing

Have a list of current customer or prospect emails? Great! It’s time to set up account based ads. Platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google can match your customer lists to users that have an account on their platform. This can be a powerful way to up-sell or stay top of mind to those who have already given you their information. They’ve trusted you enough to provide you with their information, and now it’s time for them to buy!

Social Media

It’s time we get social on Social. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but social media should not only be for selling. Odds are, if a user is following you on social media, they are already “sold” on your business, now they want more information. Be personal – this is how you really win on social media. Ask fun questions, get to know them, and build their trust before asking for business. One thing that helps me is looking at my favorite brand’s social media channels. I want to see how they were able to relate to me and then I can compare that back to the businesses that I work with and ask myself, “what do the customers really care about?”

Content

Create content for every moment the user is looking for:

I-want-to-know moment: Create content that is purely informational. This will catch the user in the early stages and list you as a business that can help, not just sell.

I-want-to-do moment: Create content for your DIY customers. Maybe it’s machine maintenance, instructions on how to use your product, or tips on how to maximize efficiency; your business can write content to help your customer when they’d prefer to do it themselves.

I-want-to-buy moment: Create content stating why a prospect should choose your business. They are ready to make a decision,  have content available to show them why they should choose you.

The most important thing to keep in mind when writing content is that Google sees the entire page, not just individual keywords. You’ll no longer have much luck throwing keywords into a page that don’t belong. Google’s #1 goal is to serve the most relevant information to the user. So if you’re writing content for the user, rather than the search engine, you’re winning!

2019 is all about personalized marketing. This concept can be hard to navigate, but once you work out the kinks, you’ll see why it works! Let us know if you need a little help getting there. Until then remember it’s all about ME in twenty-nineteen.