Personalized Experiences Delight Customers and Create Better Business

In today’s world, purchasing a product or just being a customer can feel like an assembly line. Long , queues, product shortages, and the feeling that all of these businesses know your pain without being authentic about it.

But it’s not always that simple. Customers are not cogs in a runaway system—they’re people. We’re people. And that’s why we need to talk to your customers as such. Market to them responsibly, and even, just maybe, personalize their buying journey along the way.

Build Personalized Experiences

People expect an experience. They expect to be delighted. That expectation makes it harder to reach some customers and sometimes, harder to keep them. It’s not just about the product or service anymore—it’s about the experience and whether or not they feel you care about them. This change in customer behavior is why it’s so important to appeal to the person behind your buyer persona, not just your buyer persona. That’s how you create an engaging experience, strengthen personal bonds, and keep your customers delighted.

It’s Not About Industry, It’s About Interest

Networking is essential. Without it, you’re left alone on an island. A big way to network, and learn as you do it, is by practicing inbound marketing for your businesses.

It’s hard to keep customers engaged. Even the people that really want to do business with you can start to drift. So how do you appeal to the audience who isn’t as motivated to keep paying attention?

Instead of focusing only on industry trends or best practices or whatever you think customers want to hear, consider what interests leads outside of the workplace—their hobbies or interests, for example. Host a workshop that motivates prospects to participate and create something they can use in their personal or professional lives. That’s one clear way will your prospects and customers will remember your hard work to provide value beyond a sale.

If you’re not careful, you can find yourself guessing and stressing about what you think your audience wants to hear. That’s just super stressful to deal with. Instead, make your decisions based on data through engaging surveys. What do your existing customers want from you outside of the usual meetings or products? What do they like? What don’t they like? Use this information to benefit all of your customers, and you’ll have a great time.

Another way you can really punch the idea home that you care about your customer? Video. Creating short, personalized videos as an invitation or thank you for attending shows you understood the assignment. 

Do you see how this can be applied to your customers as well? Treat them like a guest, develop something they’ll love (based on data), and then deliver a personalized experience that delights.

Give To a Person, Not a Persona

If you do it right, the gift of knowledge, or even an actual gift, can be critical in converting a lead, making a sale, or retaining a customer. That’s why you need to map out your buyer’s journey in advance, then add critical gifting points. These are points at which a customer receives a personalized gift in the buying process that shows you and your company know they are a person and that you care about what they care about. 

Key tip: if the gifts you have in mind require a vendor to produce, prioritize discovering a gifting solution that can reach a high volume of people while also nurturing relationships. That’s how you maximize value for your budget and keep your internal processes sustainable.

Personalize Your Content

The best buying journeys strive to eliminate friction, but it can happen to the best of us. You can do everything right, and still, a customer might experience a problem you didn’t foresee or is out of your control. A great way to be proactive in anticipation of friction is to personalize your content.  

First, identify the potential friction points in the customer’s journey. Then, determine which piece of content is best suited for those friction points. Lastly, develop personalized content and implement it into your strategy. The goal here is simple: create a meaningful piece of tailored content that illustrates to your customer that you understand researching a product or service can be just as stressful as buying. 

Personalized content isn’t the start, middle, or end of an effective marketing strategy; it’s the secret sauce that guides a customer through your strategy. 

Think of personalized content as momentum. No more stop, start, stop, start or dragging a customer along through the path you think is best. Instead, personalized content is placed where they want to go, and acts as grease on the wheels. You want a customer’s business, and if your marketing strategy is sound, they’ll want to work with you too. 

One final thought: the better you understand the people behind your personas, the better you understand your personas. You’ll start to notice patterns, behaviors, and opportunities to become a better marketer. Ultimately, that means better business for all.

Personalize Your Marketing with Some Sauce!

At Sauce Marketing, we believe there are two key ways to personalize your marketing: listening and storytelling. It’s important to keep your ear to the ground and listen to common issues. It’s important to leverage your tech stack so that you can keep tabs on discussions around your customers online. And it’s vital to ask the right questions so that you can better understand what your customers need from you.

Once you have that information, it’s time to guide. A fantastic way to shift traditional marketing into a more personalized flavor is storytelling and messaging with StoryBrand. We’re a certified StoryBrand Agency, which means we know how to tell a compelling, personalized story about your company to your customers. Ready to get personal? Schedule a call with one of our certified Growth Guides today. And in the meantime, start extinguishing friction fires in your organization—download the free guide below!