By Jason Eisenberg
Community Program Manager for Office Depot
The days of one-size-fits-all sales packages are long gone. Whether consumers have become smarter or more suspicious, it now requires a personal touch to effectively market and sell to your prospective customers. Every customer is unique and has a personal motivation to buy – it’s up to you to understand that motivation and to guide it to a sale.
Every third Thursday of the quarter is deemed National Get to Know Your Customers Day, but if you’re only spending four days a year to get to know those who give you time and money, there’s 361 days left in the year where you’re not acquiring important information. That information leads to a business buzzword called personalization.
According to Forbes and Segment’s 2017 Survey, personalization is a huge boon to your business.
- 49% of customers bought items they didn’t plan to purchase due to a personalized recommendation from a brand (only 5% of impulse purchases were returned)
- 40% say they purchased an item more expensive than planned due to personalized services
- 44% say they will likely return after a personalized shopping experience
On and Offline Events
If your business has a physical location in or near your community, hosting an event can be an easy and fun way to have meaningful conversations with your customers. Depending on your industry, it could be a networking or social event but it’s important to remember customers and those in attendance need to be heard. You, the owner, have an amazing opportunity to get real-time feedback with the added bonus of your customer now putting a face to your company. For physical locations, you can get professional signage and promotional materials same-day, if needed, here.
If you don’t have a space, you can still do something very similar online. Try hosting a webinar or doing a live Q&A that provides your customers with knowledge they are seeking. If they learned something useful, they might hit ‘follow’, and if they hit follow, you can track when and why they joined your page. Live Q&A’s are also invaluable for discovering specific questions your customers might have. Make sure you answer them! By the way, Office Depot hosts a live Q&A twice a month.