Personalize Your Marketing: Stand Out from the Crowd - Essay Sample

Introduction

People are bombarded with lots of marketing messages every day. A good marketer should have a strategy for standing out in the sea of promotion messages if they are to capture the attention of any customer. One great way to do this is to make communication about the customer. It is important to personalize the marketing experience for each customer because people only pay attention to what to find relevant and personal (Brudner, 2019). One-size-fits-all generic messages often do not produce good results in sales.

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Contextualizing marketing messages to individual customers assures them that the marketer is concerned about them and their ultimate benefits and not just his or her own success (Brudner, 2019). Such a customer will see the marketer as a partner rather than just a salesperson. It is about making customers feel that they are the winners in the deals since everyone wants to be the hero in their own stories. The marketer just needs to get to be the facilitator supporting their success and ensuring that they win.

Research Before Reaching Out

A marketer needs to research widely about his product, the product niche, and target customers. For successful campaigns, marketers need to know their existing customers and ideal buyers well. Research involving marketing leaders indicates that competition increasingly focuses on the customer experience (Girard, 2012). Customizing customer experiences requires that marketers understand the needs and expectations of their clients. A marketer cannot get this information through guesswork or a Google search. It requires the ability to interview existing customers who fit the company well to understand what makes them loyal to you. A marketer must consistently make such efforts to cement the existing customer base further and attract new ones.

However, the research does not end at the level of the customer. Most manufacturers are in a supply chain where they do not sell directly to the consumers. The marketer needs to dig deeper also to know the end-user of the product they are selling in its final form (Brudner, 2019). Such information includes how the company's customers relate with their clients and the demographics of their clients. It would also be important to know what motivates the buying behavior of the end-user. These are all invaluable insights for marketers when they are working with their customers.

Build Rapport First

People tend to trust those that they know and like. Making a positive first impression with prospects is a good way to start building trust and rapport. People feel more comfortable sharing their afflictions and aspirations with individuals to whom they are strongly connected (Schultz, 2018). A marketer needs to know the afflictions and aspirations of a prospect to make a successful sale. Building rapport in sales requires that the communicator makes sincere connections. Therefore, the salesperson needs to show interest in the conversation and be genuine and friendly (Schultz, 2018). It helps to avoid conflicts if the marketer researches or understands the culture of their prospect. While it is important to project their real selves, marketers have to adjust their approaches to fit each individual prospect's backgrounds and expectations. It is not about the marketer changing their nature to fit but rather being aware of the prospect's culture and how it responds at best.

Define Your Buyer

Effective marketing takes into account buyer personas. Salespeople have to identify their prospects before they can sell anything precisely. Customers will most likely pay attention to the marketing messages if they find them highly relevant to their needs personalized for their experiences (Sheptoski, 2018). That consumer need can be best addressed through awareness of buyer personas. It helps the marketer to streamline their sales and marketing efforts so that they only spend time on the most viable leads.

Contribute First, Sell Second

A marketer must overcome the temptation to make the products they are selling the center of their conversation with the customer. Similarly, it would be a bad move to refer customers to blogs and other marketing media that only talk about the company and the product as this turns off many clients. At best, communication that only focuses on selling leads to disappointing customer engagement (Sheptoski, 2018). Instead, one needs to come up with a content strategy that helps customers gain new information on issues related to the product and industry. The information must be truly valuable to the viewer or the reader. In addition, it has to be empowering, engaging, interesting, and should enable the customer to make a more informed decision.

Ask Questions, and Listen

Regardless of how much marketer research about a prospect, there will always be information gaps. Noting that a good salesperson should help the customer solve their problems, it is important to understand the issues that they deal with fully. Therefore, a marketer must ask the prospect a lot of thoughtful questions in the course of the conversation. The marketer must be curious. They can prepare a few questions in advance as a jumping-off point. However, one does not have to use them because the conversation may take a different turn (Girard, 2012). Showing curiosity and genuine interest will motivate people to open up and talk about themselves and their experiences.

Learning through asking questions requires the ability to listen well. Therefore, the communicator of the marketing messages must keep silent and listen attentively to the prospect when they answer the questions. Good listening is not just about correct turn-taking in a conversation but really hearing what the other person says and communicating back their thoughts to them when they finish talking. One may follow with questions to verify understanding of the responses or seek further clarifications (Brudner, 2019). In addition to helping the marketer understand the problem, attentive listening also makes the prospect happy with the marketer. In turn, the prospects are likely to return the favor when the marketer speaks.

Mind Psychological Quirks

People do not always hold rational opinions. The human mind has a multitude of psychological quirks that influence how it perceives certain things (Antonio, 2019). For example, when making decisions, people consider many diverse details about the inherent worth of a product. Salespeople need to understand how the brain works when making decisions to be able to analyze their prospects in a better way. However, they should not take advantage of this awareness to manipulate or deceive their audiences. Being aware of these psychological quirks will help a salesperson customize their products to the specific needs of the prospects. The common psychological quirks that a marketer is likely to encounter during sales are anchoring effect, decoy effect, bandwagon effect, loss aversion, peak-end rule, the curse of knowledge, and the halo effect.

Approach Customers on Their Level

A great salesperson brings their unique personality to the job. However, it equally important to remember that each prospect has a unique personality. Therefore, the salesperson should to their individual prospect's personality and figure out the best way to approach them (Brudner, 2019). One's personality determines the kind of information they prioritize and how they expect salespersons to approach them.

Hit an Emotional High Point

Almost all human decisions are partly based on emotions. The options that people consider when they are confronted with situations that require decision making are based on values influenced by emotions from their related past experiences. The decisions emanate from the references created from these emotions (Brudner, 2015). Besides, cognitive dissonance theory holds that holding contradictory beliefs make people have unpleasant experiences, which they tend to mitigate by seeking rationality. Therefore, it is true that customers sometimes buy things based only on emotions and then justify them as rational. As such, salespeople should capitalize on the value of emotions. Having a pitch that hits an emotional high note thus increases the chances of closing a sale (Girard, 2012). Some of the emotions that people consider when making decisions are greed, fear, altruism, envy, pride, and shame.

You Are Selling to a Person

It is important to remember that leads are human beings. Emails and other marketing messages should be selected carefully to ensure they do not offend the prospects. Although a salesperson needs to be professional when selling, they also have to be personable (Mackenzie, 2019). Prospects have their personal lives away from the place of work and passions that may not be necessarily related to their jobs. When conversing with customers, it is okay to drift to personal issues once in a while. It does not have to strictly about business all the time.

Selling Platform: Face to Face

Face-to-face marketing requires the ability to make split decisions on business prospects. A marketer should use their experiences to determine clients that are likely to respond positively to their sales pitch. However, dismissing prospects without checking carefully may lead to the loss of some important customers. Also, the first impression counts a lot in face-to-face marketing (Belonwu, 2013). Therefore, a good marketer should have confidence and put one a warm smile. This platform also gives the marketer a good opportunity to use demos and visual displays to present their products dramatically.

Selling Platform: Social Media

In the current era of digital data, customers are overloaded with different types of marketing content competing for their attention. Therefore, effective marketing requires a strategic choice of communication tools. Communicating with vision and clarity gives one an edge over other marketers. Skillful use of social media in marketing can dramatically initiate correspondence based on how the content is created and presented (Girard, 2012). Being strategic about the manner and timing of marketing communication on social media lends significance to every touchpoint.

Specialized marketing media like the HubSpot have features like live chats that enable real-time interaction between a marketer and customers. Other features like support tickets and a dedicated knowledge base enable customers to see responses to support needs and commonly asked questions. These tools help eliminate barriers between the marketer and the customer. Social media also have features that enable marketers and companies to collect voice-of-the-customer surveys on a regular basis. Such data help companies improve their service skills.

References

Antonio, H. L. (2019, September 16). The 7 Psychological Quirks you'll encounter during the Sales Process. Retrieved from https://andersonbpoinc.com/blogs/7-psychological-quirks-encounter-sales-process/

Belonwu, V. (2013, January 7). 7 Ways To Sell Anything To Anyone Face-to-face Tactics That Can Help Your Business Grow. Retrieved from https://businessgross.com/2013/01/07/7-ways-to-sell-anything-to-anyone-face-to-face/

Brudner, E. (2015). How to Use Emotions to Sell. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-use-emotions-to-sell

Brudner, E. (2019). How to Sell Anything to Anybody. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-sell-anything-to-anybody

Girard, J. (2012). Joe Girard's 13 Essential Rules of Selling: How to Be a Top Achiever and Lead a Great Life. McGraw Hill Professional.Mackenzie, B. (2019, October 2). Step-By-Step Guide to Defining Your Buyer Persona. Retrieved from https://evenbound.com/step-by-step-guide-to-defining-your-buyer-persona/

Schultz, M. (2018, November 20). 7 Ways to Build Rapport in Sales and Connect with People. Retrieve...