How do you make a place as big and expansive as the internet into a place “where everybody knows your name?” The answer is: Personal Marketing. Similar to the feeling patrons get when they walk into their neighborhood watering hole, digital marketing must involve strategies that feel personal and authentic to a customer.

And to create personal digital marketing experiences, you have to find out who they are as well as who you are.

Nice to Meet You

Getting to know your audience in a real way can be achieved with 3 methods:

• Surveys – Ask customers everything and anything you’d like to know about your company from a customer perspective. How has your product helped them? Do they feel connected to your product or message? What would they like to see improve? When are they most likely to shop? These broad and detailed questions give customer insight and open up a direct dialogue between the business and the customer. Personalizing questions by using customers’ names or other personal identification is an added way to make surveys and questionnaires individualized.
• Research – Find out who your customers are and focus your personal marketing initiatives accordingly. What is the age, gender, income, location, education and occupation of your customer? What are their hobbies, how do they spend their down time and when are they most likely to connect digitally? Getting to know your customer allows you to appeal to their needs and wants in the most authentic way possible.
• Socializing – Connect with customers through social media sites to get honest, quick feedback. Send out a photo or video of your product with a caption or question asking for relevant feedback. Answer customer tweets, posts and comments regularly. Using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social sites allows you to receive customer feedback quickly and opens up a more casual dialogue where customers tend to be more honest.

Making personal marketing experiences

Letting customers get to know your business in a genuine way creates trust. Establish who you are using these tools.

• Have a Voice –Try to convey who you are by incorporating your tone and emotion into everything you share, post and publish online. Depending on your customer, your voice might be more casual and conversational, or more formal and business oriented. Interact with customers in a way that feels comfortable, friendly and human.
• Make Real Connections –Give customers a chance to get to know the people behind the company. Use actual people and their names when connecting digitally through email, social media or advertising. Seeing or hearing from a person digitally makes a company more accountable for their service or product by establishing a genuine connection between people.
• Share Your Tips & Tricks –Let customers know how you created your product or service through background information, stories of trial and error and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Allowing customers to see behind the curtains shows a company’s vulnerability, which makes their interaction much more meaningful.

Utilizing a digital strategy by creating a personal marketing experience for customers will establish a sincere, authentic relationship, which opens a more direct connection between consumer and business. Now getting to know your customer will feel like you’re sitting down with them over a drink.