Sorting out the difference: Personalized versus personal
Mark Schaefer
Top Voice in Personal Branding, Marketing strategist, keynote speaker, university educator, futurist, and bestselling author of "Marketing Rebellion," "KNOWN," and "Belonging to the Brand."
I recently had a coaching session with an entrepreneur who is a former chiropractor. He told me this story that provides a great illustration of the difference between personalized versus personal.
When he was a chiropractor, he was treating three children in the same family for a chronic pain problem. Over the course of months he got to know the family well and learned that the family loved to read. Every night the mother would read stories to her children.
He learned that there was a printing service where you could buy customized books that inserted the child's name into the story. He thought this would be a meaningful gift for these children who had been his long-time patients, and of course the family was very touched by the gift.
"I'd say those books cost me about $50," he said. "But the gesture moved the family in such an emotional way that it brought me many referred clients. They passed on the story of the books I bought for the family for many years. I didn't buy the books to get more business, but it turned out to be a smart business move."
Personalized versus personal
Many businesses claim that they get personal with their customers but what they really mean is their connections are "personalized" because the customer's name is at the top of the email salutation.
Personalized is cut and paste.
Personal is unique and custom.
Personalized doesn't require any knowledge of the customer.
Personal reflects an understanding of a human being.
Personalized doesn't elicit an emotion.
Personal creates an emotional bond that may lead to reciprocity and new business benefits.
Marketing is about emotion
Selling based on price or discounts is what happens when there is no emotion attached to a product. Great marketing helps connect some positive emotion to a product, service, or person. In many cases, that means getting personal, not just personalized.
The ability to personalize today is so prevalent, you could argue that it has become impersonal!
In this case study, my friend was no longer a service provider, he was a legend because he paid attention to his human customers. He was an empathic marketer.
Getting personal can't be automated. You have to do the work. But if you want to turn your customers into your marketing department and carry your message forward, it's well worth the effort.
I appreciate you and the time you took out of your day to read this! You can find more articles like this from me on the top-rated {grow} blog and while you're there, take a look around and see what else I do at Schaefer Marketing Solutions. For news and insights find me on Twitter at @markwschaefer and to see what I do when I'm not working, follow me on Instagram.
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5 年I think the key to this is how rare the opportunity is to actually help people in this way. I recently undertook to do one random act of kindness a day for a month - it was hard! It's not often that people in genuine need of help, stumble across your path. It made me realise how insular your life can become. After a while, my kindness radar began to notice more and more opportunities, particularly among people who are hiding some unhappiness. They are easy to help because all you have to do is listen! Anyway, my point is that its easy to spout off lots of content that is meaningful to you and shotgun it off hoping it may be helpful to others. It's a lot harder to do it in a way that's personal, as Mark describes. It's rarer and therefore more valuable.?
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5 年Lovely read, as always Mark.
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5 年I think the entirety of the next "marketing rebellion" will be figuring out exactly what this post is about. 100% spot on.??
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5 年good blog. Happy to share this with my network
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5 年Thank you for this clear illustration! As a homeschool consultant, I help every family by answering questions to find what is best for each child in their family. Sometimes that changes from year to year for a child.