Personalized Marketing – is it the need of an hour!

Few years ago, when virtual world did not exist, things were not too complex when it comes to business as customers were not very demanding and analytical but now as we are exploring the new opportunities and platforms offered by this so called virtual world i.e. digital media, cloud computing, social media, wearable smart technologies etc. Day after day, things have started becoming more complex as customers have become more informative and logical when it comes to making buying decision. Earlier, influencers were identified and targeted but now in this virtual world, it is difficult to find influencers as customer’s interactive medium has become virtual and it has become wider. Customers have become more vulnerable these days when it comes to brand commitment unlike earlier days, when loyalty was regarded and rewarded.

Over and above, stiff nature of competition has also played a vital role to make things even more complex as customers are now bombarded and confused with lot of product options. People have acclimatized their lifestyle and behavior to deal with these emerging trends of virtual world.

In such a highly complex economic and business environment, it has become challenge for companies to target customer and increase profitable sales. Now days, companies are merely focusing on surviving strategies rather growth strategies. Gone are days, when companies were focusing on long term growth strategies and business processes to build sustainable business model but now I am surprised to see the way companies have become shortsighted when it comes to sales. Everybody wants immediate favorable sales results due to vulnerable nature of economic and business environment.

To deal with this complex and challenging business environment, some of the leading companies have changed their ways to operate their respective businesses by keeping customer’s changing and vulnerable behavior and needs into consideration. Companies haves started adopting practices which actually help them to target customers in a personalized fashion but the question is how do they do it? In an era of virtual world where we spend our time on mobile, social media and digital media, we actually leave lot of digital data of our activities I.e. conversation on social media, private emails are stored in cloud system, phone conversation etc.
  
More and more of our activities are digitally recorded: Most things we do in our digitalized world leave a data trail. For example, what we are searching for and what websites we visit, how we click through them, as well as what and when we buy, share or like something. When we read digital books or listen to digital music the devices will collect (and share) data on what we are reading and listening to and how often we do so. And when we make payments using credit or payment cards the transactions are logged.

So, we are living in a world of “Datafication” where we have a lot more data than ever before, in more complex formats, that are often fast moving and of varying quality. The best part is we now have Analytics and Business Intelligence tools and methods that allow us to analyze vast amounts of data by breaking the task of processing very large data sets down into smaller tasks that are run in parallel using a large cluster of computers. As a result, we get to know about action insights of each customer. This is what helps companies to stand out from their competitors and make companies capable enough to claim decent consumer mind space.

Amazon, largest ecommerce giant is leveraging this Big Data and using predictive analytics and as a result, it has been successfully doing personalized sales.Some of the world’s leading advertisers, such as L'Oréal Paris, Intel and Fiat, have discovered new ways to use Google Search Trends – for personalized sales. From search volume and search keywords, these companies are trying to understand consumer’s behavior by location.

Personalized Marketing is an emerging trend and is only solution left out with companies to deal with such a complex sales situation and also to ensure increasing growth rate of profitable sales.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with this sales revolution? Are you ready to leverage data and capitalize this new emerging trend of personalized sales?