Personalised Vs Personal: How Social Age Brands Know the Difference

Humans are hardwired to want relationships and meaningful interactions with people — it’s how we operate, it’s what makes us feel special. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re no different when it comes to our relationships with brands. These days, we want (nay expect) brands to create and provide meaningful interactions that are personal to us as individuals.

Today’s companies are required to to create more human connections and display more human values than ever before. We’ve entered the Social Age of digital transformation: this new era has shifted the focus of digital marketing from engineering to communications, bringing the human side of social media to the forefront.?

It Matters Little What You Say About Your Brand, And More What Others Say?

In this age of social connection it’s rarely what you’re saying about yourself that gets repeated — more often it’s what others say about your brand that’s heard and remembered. Yet, very few brands employ a specific word-of-mouth marketing strategy.

Word-of-mouth marketing can’t be bought, it can only be earned. That’s why it’s so valuable. The goal is to create engaged, loyal and vocal fans. These fans then become advocates by recommending your brand to friends and family — extending your ROI via a snowball effect of valuable conversation, and ultimately conversions. With this in mind, brands need to stop merely hoping people tell their networks about them, and instead look at specific strategies that actively encourage people to talk.

Social Age Brands Have Human Values & Interactions

If you can think of human interactions and human values for your brand then you’re halfway there. Reaching an individual with a personal touch is key — it should be unique and custom, just like the members of your target audience. It needs to reflect an understanding of them as human beings, and it should elicit emotion. Personal touches create an emotional bond.

Getting personal in the Social Age cannot be automated — it’s a lot of work. And sometimes it’s a gamble. But if you want to turn your customers into your PR department and drive that word-of-mouth, then it’s well worth the effort.?

Case in point — BBC Australia went hyper-personal to launch Tom Hardy’s period drama, Taboo. They launched the show exclusively via social influencers and took them deep into the story of the show with a secret premiere screening in a forgotten underground Sydney theatre. Guests were intriguingly asked an unusual question ahead of the event: “What’s your hat size?” and a week later were delivered a special wax-sealed box housing pages from an old newspaper with articles about Taboo’s main characters and plot backstories. The main asset was an exquisitely crafted, period-correct top hat — personalized with each influencer’s name and initials. Under the brim was a hidden map with directions for the private screening. The BBC relied on deep personalisation to drive participation and engagement among TV tastemakers on social — who in turn took their own communities along on the journey, creating the desired conversation snowball effect. All this helped ensure the show’s domestic premiere was a success.

This campaign demonstrates that a hyper-personal strategy is not necessarily about interacting with each member of your audience individually, but about creating such a memorable, personal connection with a core group that they become advocates, spreading the message much wider on your behalf. And share they do.?

74% of consumers say they’ve left reviews for local businesses in the last 12 months. According to Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other type of advertising, and almost three quarters of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions. Other studies show that 64% of marketing executives believe word-of-mouth is the most effective form of marketing — yet only 6% are confident they have mastered it.

Many businesses claim they do get personal with their customers. In a recent study by 1000heads, 80% of businesses said they sometimes or regularly include surprise and delight moments for individual customers. However, almost half of respondents said they had limited to no understanding of the demographics and psychographics of their social media audience. Less than 1 in 10 businesses indicated that learning more about their audience was a top social media priority for 2022. It’s hard to move someone personally when you don’t know who they are, or what they’re about.

Personal Is More Than Personalised Emails

Often what is meant by “personalised” marketing is that the customer’s name is at the top of the email, or printed on a membership card, or that they’re sent an automated birthday voucher each year. For sure this type of personalised promotional marketing does have an effect — brands with personalised email headers experience 27% higher unique click rates and 11% higher open rates than those who don't. However, this isn’t the meaningful connection that’s being embraced by leading Social Age brands. It could even be argued that this type of “personalisation” from brands today is so commonplace, that it's actually come to feel somewhat impersonal to the end consumer.?

Personal marketing to drive word-of-mouth is an ever-changing undertaking, requiring a continuous cycle of adaptation and evolution. Social Age brands have nailed that personal touch — either managing to operationalise and scale personalised experiences, or benefit from the conversational halo effect that highly targeted and carefully curated surprise and delight experiences can deliver.?

TD Bank took their personal touch to the next level with their campaign #TDTHANKSYOU , to show appreciation to their valued clients. They built a special ATM (an Automated Thanking Machine) to provide amazing gestures of appreciation — each one tailored to the individual client’s situation and interests. Via their ATM, TD Bank surprised clients with personalised thank you gifts ranging from Disneyland tickets for a single mum, to roses for the elderly, and airline tickets for a mother who wanted to visit her sick daughter. By literally taking notes on people’s individual circumstances, TD showed that they not only care about their client's bank accounts, but their lives as well. Plus the resulting video content that was shared and re-shared across social media created huge exposure and positive engagement levels for the brand.

This is a critical element of a hyper-personal social strategy.? While the route to driving word-of-mouth may be nailing a targeted approach — which can feel as though potential reach is therefore limited — the exact opposite is true. We’re moving faster than ever toward blanket global adoption of social media, with over half a billion people joining a social platform in the last year. Each month, 95% of the world’s working-age internet users are active on social media. That’s a hell of a lot of people with a phone at their fingertips — ready and able to shout about their encounter with your brand to their network.?

So try it — not merely personalised marketing, but personal touches. At the very least you might make someone’s day, but in reality the long term benefits for your brand are much broader.

Getting Hyper-Personal is one of five communications principles that guide the world’s leading social brands. Learn more strategies to navigate the social age in our white paper: The Social Age of Digital Transformation .?

When have you been delighted by a personal brand experience? Did you share it on social media at the time? Share it with us below!

?