According to CMO Council, 54% of all consumers in the U.S. and Canada would consider ending their loyalty relationships if they were not given tailor-made, relevant content and offers.
Providing personalized and customized services has always been a time-tested way to retain customers. In their heyday, mom and pop stores were able to not only survive but were highly successful with this approach to marketing goods and services. It appears that big retailers are now slowly but surely realizing the wisdom of this method. With big data bringing more information than ever before to the marketer’s fingertips, it is now possible for B2B marketers to embrace personalization and customization — taking campaigns to the next level.
Customizing and personalizing the B2B buyer journey
A marketer may attempt to customize engagement by targeting prospects with unique web content suited to their preference, or by positioning the product based upon a prospect’s perceived likes and preferences. The marketer can, for instance, position a product on the benefits it provides to a customer known to seek value in his or her purchases. The same marketer may position the same product on aspects such as free shipping, a lifetime guarantee, easy return or exchange policies, and other frills, to a prospect who primarily seeks a good experience over other considerations. For a customer obsessed with price, the marketer may reach out on the price advantages or “value for money” the product offers.
Personalizing engagement with the B2B prospect requires analytics much deeper and complex than a basic understanding of the buyer’s behavioral traits and demographic characteristics. As the B2B buyer does not buy for self-consumption, the B2B marketer needs to reach out by highlighting how the product or service would help in whatever objectives the buyer has for his or her organization. In many cases, the B2B marketer may have to guide the buyer through a journey, to help them understand the benefits of the product or how the product would help do things better.
The core of a personalized or customized approach is taking a customer-centric attitude, which means finding out on a proactive basis what the customer wants in the different stages of the marketing lifecycle, and positioning the product on such lines.
