At What Price Personalisation?
Author: Neil Wilkins
Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.
"Every Overfinch is a personal creation, designed to the most exacting standards. Yours." says Overfinch, the company who customise your £75,000 Range Rover to include every conceivable extra your mind could imagine. "Luxury, performance and visual styling". "Luxury, redefined" says the advertisement.
This is all very well if you have more cash to spend on your vehicle than most people would spend on two or three cars, but is there a lesson to learn here for those of us with more modest products and services?
Personalisation is a key element in the marketing mix that both defines what we offer to the customer at the same time as differentiating us from our competition. But there's always a price to pay. It costs to provide personalisation, adapting our offer to individual customers is an expensive game, taking up valuable time, budget and resources. In many ways now though we don't have a choice because this is what customers expect.
With the arrival of digital marketing and social media, marketing changed forever. Gone are the days when one size fits all and you can get away with products on your terms. Peer to peer reviews, social media advocacy and the availability of information 24/7 means the landscape for marketers to use their influence is ever more competitive and complex.
But there's a simplicity in the complexity. The simplicity is the idea that everything you say, do, serve and deliver should be, in the eyes of the customer, on their terms and not yours. This is what personalisation is all about.... the customer's perception that they are getting the best deal and on their terms. The reality may be a little different in that the products aand services are inherently the same, but in the personalised marketing approach we can differentiate and appear bespoke.
So where do you start if your customers aren't paying you an equivalent of an average annual salary for your product? It's in the customer journey... the step by step process of engagement with you. The flow chart of every point of contact they have with you including promotion, digital, face to face, and sales. At each point in that process you can give them some personalisation... at least in their eyes... and you can drive forward your marketing on your customers' terms.
Tags: customer journey (5), personalisation (4)
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