Virtually no one likes to receive advertising messages that do not fit their tastes and preferences, and even less if they do not fully fit their needs. According to Salesforce, “66% of consumers expect brands to understand their individual needs.” In accordance with smartinsights Citing a SmarterHQ study, “72% of consumers say they now only engage with marketing messages that are personalized and tailored to their interests.”
New consumers have become accustomed to interacting with personalized content in digital spaces where successful brands deftly operate, because they are capable of understanding exactly what their customers want, when and where they want it.
It can be quite complex to design a highly personalized experience for each client, however, with the right strategy, what seems impossible will no longer be. However, is this enormous effort to achieve personalization profitable?
Gartner predicts that “80% of marketers will abandon personalization efforts by 2025 due to lack of return on investment, the pitfalls of managing customer data, or both.” Consequently, the world of marketing is facing a major change in strategy.
With technological advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science, it is possible to change the strategy, focusing on prediction and thus anticipate what the customer will need and want next. As very well exemplified Tamara Grominsky in ForbesInstead of choosing specific movies for John Wilson, a 44-year-old sales representative from Tucson, Netflix’s algorithms study the preferences and behaviors of thousands of similar Netflix users, to make an educated guess about what to expect. John next would like to see.” In this way, Netflix focuses on the relevance of the content to anticipate what the customer will want.
Everything shows that the key for these times is to be and stay relevant, that is, to quickly anticipate changing customer demands. A Accenture research revealed that “in the United States alone, the potential revenue that companies across all industries lost to their competitors in 2017 by not being relevant enough reached a staggering US$1 trillion.”
Orienting the marketing strategy towards relevance is not only good business, it is also the correct path by which companies will travel in a permanent state of success.