Make it personal...welcome to the generation of the individual!

As marketers, we’ve been trained to think about demographics. Historically, it has helped us to categorise our customers and speak to them in a way that resonates better than one generic message. However, consumer research today shows that we can benefit from relying less on demographics to categorise our customer groups.

Welcome to the era of the individual. According to our research, today’s new consumers’ preferences, interests, and situations are changing, and they want brands to recognise that. And there’s a steep price to pay for ignoring our customers’ personalities; consumers in APAC aren’t afraid to switch brands that can’t keep up.

On the other hand, consumers are impressed when brands do keep up with their individual preferences and interests.

So what can you do? You can start by re-examining traditional segments. To provide some additional perspective, here are some key takeaways from a recent study of ours, the Make It Personal report:

• Generational labels are out, personal interests are in

Over three times as many consumers feel closer to people who share their interests than to people of a similar demographic. People want to be seen as individuals. From a brand perspective, that means we should put data-driven insights to work and prove that we’re paying attention to customers’ evolving interests.

• Celebrate Customer Individuality and Identity

Consumers in India are changing rapidly. 74% of Indians view themselves differently from how they did a year ago, and 60% say their preferences have changed in the past three months. Therefore, brands need to be ready to evolve their customer experience to keep up.

• Create moments that matter, consistently

Infrequent, one-off offers do not resonate as well as they used to. Today’s consumer prefers to receive regular thoughtful gestures instead. Marketers need to stay connected with their customers. For that reason, it is critical for organisations to be able to digest signals from customers and respond in real time, creating a more natural and consistent dialogue

• Customers will advocate for you when they know you’re paying attention

Personalisation is an expectation across APAC, particularly in India, where a striking 85% of consumers expect to receive more personalised experiences and interactions when they share their data. So if you have the data, you must be able to utilise it.

We’ve known that personalisation matters for a long time now but, looking at these insights, it’s clear that brands need to be able to continually evolve their customer data strategy and use real-time intelligence to keep the experience relevant. If not, they risk being left behind. And having the right tech stack to help you do all this at scale is basic fundamentals.

I’d love to hear what you think, and what you are doing to turn your?personalisation engine into an experience driver. Looking forward to your reaction in the comments.

#DigitalTransformation #Personalisation #Adapt #DigitalMoments #experiencemakers #Adobe