The Power of Personalization

John Holobinko, Business Reimagined, LLC

Personalization and customization are so effective because they appeal to the consumers’ vanity and desire for something that fits their needs specifically and was not designed for everybody else. It also allows you to charge more for your product or service.

Why Does Personalization Work?

Like it or not, social media has created a culture of self-presentation. We are the stars of our show. The consumer has long been conditioned to accept that products made for the masses are inexpensive and products that are handmade, customized, or tailored should command a higher price. People want to be able to say this was made just for me. It's special. That's why personalization is so effective. This kind of customization also provides businesses the ability to charge top dollar. 

Engaging the customer to design their own is an important tactic because it also has a psychological driver behind it. If someone takes the time to create something and give you their feedback, and then you design a product or service just for them, they will feel more obligated to purchase it.. This can be a very good thing for your business.

Product/Service Personalization 

Many businesses these days are asking their customers to design their own ideal product or service within a set of parameters that the business designs. We'll see in a moment just how engaging and lucrative that can be. First, you need a business that sells a product or service that is flexible or tailorable in a scalable way. This works ideally for a service provider that offers different levels of service (such as a nutritionist) but is doable by a variety of businesses with a little creativity.

One example is to employ a quiz, designed to illicit responses from targeted prospects who are sufficiently interested in your product or service to tell you more about themselves. When you have a customer telling you who they are, what they like and don't like, and how they will use your product or service, you have marketing gold.

The quiz should include who they are and questions on important demographics to your product or service (for instance, if you are a professional trainer you want to know how old they are and how sedentary their lifestyle is, among other things). It should also include their preferences as they relate to your product or service. By answering this quiz, they are telling you about them and doing so in an enjoyable way. After all, everyone likes to talk about themselves.

There are several other inexpensive ways to offer personalization to your customers. In addition to using quizzes, you can install interactive components on your website that take people to the content that is most applicable to their needs. Although you can accomplish this same thing through tabs or buttons, what drives engagement is the interaction of a potential customer telling you what they want. Think of how Subway distinguished itself when it first came on the market. It used a fast-food model, but customers picked out their toppings. The sandwich was made just for them, in front of them.

Conclusions

What you should take away from this blog is this: Designing methods to have your targeted prospects tell you what they want, and creatively customizing your products or services to meet each individual prospect’s needs is a means to differentiate your business, and convert more prospects into customers who purchase higher margin products and services from you.