3 Steps Towards Personalizing your Customer Experience

Plan your work and work on your plan

Having a strategic marketing plan can position your firm as the leading expert in the legal industry. Additionally, it helps build brand awareness, trust, credibility, improve conversion rates, and it can skyrocket your ROI. Sounds powerful, huh? It is, indeed.

All these benefits (and more) are possible thanks to personalization. With this, your firm should be able to take actionable steps that are in line with the realities of your vision and mission. Before diving in, let’s look at what personalization even is.

Personalization in marketing refers to the process of creating relevant, individualized interaction based on the information your firm learns about its consumers. This concept is creating a buzz in today’s world because clients expect a unique customer experience based on their pains and desires. According to recent customer analysis, the vast majority of consumers (80%) said they are more likely to make a purchase when businesses provide a personalized experience. In addition to this, 91% said they are more likely to do business with companies that remember, recognize, and provide them with relevant recommendations and offers.

To put things into perspective a little more, just think back to the times you went to a business, and they called you by name or remembered your accomplishments or preferences; it feels nice to be recognized! Your audience is no different. Because of this, your firm should plan the work towards a more personalized customer experience. Don’t know where to start? Here are some ideas.

Step 1: Start the process of market segmentation

Most firms start off with a buyer persona. In it, you can include information like demographics and interests. This is a great starting point, but you can take it up another level with segmentation. 

Segmentation is the process of using data to re-organize broad customer personas according to shared characteristics. For example, you can divide audiences in line with their different purchasing habits or their level of interaction with your firm. Let’s look at a real case scenario. 

Let’s say Bob and Linda are both interested in your family law firm. On the one hand, Linda is starting to go through major life changes, including the possibility of filing for a no-fault divorce or legal separation. She is searching the web for questions like, “what are the legal grounds for obtaining a divorce?” Or “What is the cost of divorce, and how long does it take?” 

On the other hand, Bob is already in the process of divorce, but he is looking for more information with regards to property and business division. He is searching the web for questions like, “My ex-partner and I own a business together. Do we need to have an outside expert evaluate who stays with what?” 

Although both Bob and Linda are interested in the services of a family law firm, they have separate wants and needs. Linda is at the initial stages of gaining awareness and gathering information. She is probably comparing and contrasting your firm with other firms. Meanwhile, Bob is aware there’s a problem and needs more specific actionable steps. He is perhaps checking more specialized pages on your website. 

In order to start the creation of a killer personalized strategy that meets the desires of users, like Bob and Linda, it’s better to take a step back to analyze and organize the existing customer data. You can start off by dividing audiences according to the four different types of market segmentation. 

 

1. Demographic segmentation: (Focuses on the who) This is the most straightforward segmentation. It classifies audiences by age, gender, income, level of education, profession, etc.
2. Psychographic segmentation: (Focuses on the why) Segmenting different personalities and interests. You can define the audience by hobbies, personality traits, values, beliefs, and lifestyles.
3. Geographic segmentation: (Focuses on the where) This includes grouping people according to their locations, i.e., county, cities, regions, etc. 
4. Behavioral segmentation: (Focuses on the how) You can gather this data through your website analytics and additional marketing channels. Here you can check for the customers’ spending habits, click behavior, browsing habits, level of loyalty to your firm, and any other ratings/reviews they’ve left.

• Specific metrics you can find on your website’s backend include time spent on your site, pages visited, referral source, exit intent, and the number of sessions. 

Step 2: Craft tailored messages with your content

Besides segmenting, it’s important your content targets all the audiences with a tailored messaging strategy. 

While there are numerous ways you can perfect your content game, we’ll focus on a website and email strategy because these two channels are some of the top ways you’re able to control your own voice to capture and nurture different kinds of leads.

• Converting CTAs: Adding calls to action in the first person enhances the user’s perspective rather than the business’s perspective. Plus, first-person CTAs have a 90% better conversion rate! Make sure to add words like “me, my, I, you.” Make it all about the client. 
• Add content recommendations according to their interests:  Use your existing data to show the content they are most likely interested in. Let’s take another look at the case of Bob and Linda. Since Linda is at the early awareness stage, you can offer more content in regards to what divorce entails, what the process is, etc. On the other hand, Bob can be redirected to, e.g., your blog post content that details the basic principles of property/business division or suggests a consultation with your experts. 
• Personalize emails and landing pages: Think of the landing pages and emails as you rolling out the red carpet for clients to walk in. Once you segment the audiences, you can create different landing pages according to their needs. Additionally, you can create email series and landing pages that are in line with past behavior on your site, geo-location, and any other segmentations. There’s no single approach to this. Just remain flexible and A/B test. The possibilities are endless! 
• Timing your content: Be there “at the right place, at the right time.” Certain days are proven to be better than others when you send out content. According to email marketing data: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays have a higher open rate. As for the timing, the middle of the day works best. However, feel free to test other days and times. Just like emails and landing pages, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a matter of A/B testing. 
• Set up trigger emails: Trigger emails have a 152% higher open rate compared to traditional emails. They can be automated by the different actions users take, i.e., welcome emails, re-engagement emails, cross-selling emails, abandoned shopping cart emails, birthday emails, etc.

 

Step 3: Add relevancy

Nowadays clients have enough options to pick from; what they are looking for is the best – not the cheapest. To be the best and offer the best, it’s necessary to tap into what your prospects are truly after. Relevancy refers to how fitting your services are to the wants and needs of the users.

Besides seeking the best option, clients want to feel seen and heard. Today, they are more inclined to try many brands and services and only stick to a brand if and only if their needs are constantly met. Harvard Business Review points out that businesses shouldn’t focus on a customer archetype (a buyer persona) but rather segment audiences to meet them at the right place, at the right time (louder for the people in the back: and this is relevancy.). 

Due to the immense control and choice clients have over their purchasing journey today, Harvard Business Review suggests businesses meet the different buyers through this new Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: 

1. Purpose: clients feel your firm shares and advance their values. 
2. Pride: They feel inspired to use your services. 
3. Partnership: Make sure they can relate to you and they can work well with your team. 
4. Protection: When you make sure consumers feel secure when doing business with you. 
5. Personalization: This is considered an addition to the traditional hierarchy. With personalization, clients should feel their experience with your firm is constantly being tailored to meet their needs. 

Build an ongoing relationship

In this day and age, adding personalization into your businesses’ vocabulary will help you stay relevant and reach more customers. In fact, it can propel you to shift towards a more focused mindset. 

Although we have been able to share some top actionable steps today towards personalization, it requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’d like to learn how your firm can offer personalized content that’ll recharge the client’s user experience and connect more calls and cases, let’s talk. 

 

The post 3 Steps Towards Personalizing your Customer Experience appeared first on Consultwebs.

from Consultwebs https://www.consultwebs.com/blog/3-steps-towards-personalization
via https://www.consultwebs.com