Your content needs to get more personal

For a long time, companies have known that personalising communication to their target audience is the way to go but have struggled to implement it in an effective and efficient way. Most settle for the salutation to be personalised. ‘Dear Mrs Smith’, being infinitely better than ‘Dear Customer’, or even worse, ‘Dear Mr Smith’, when you are clearly a woman. 

To understand the true extent of the problem it may be best to see how communication has changed through history. 

It has always been about storytelling

The one consistent thing within communication has been the fact that it is all about storytelling. Education and entertainment started out with sitting around the fire and listening to the elders share their wisdom through fables and stories. 

A few visually creative cavemen thought that putting the story on cave walls for prosperity was a way of allowing the story to live on long after the elders had passed on. 

When paper was discovered, we had handwritten books documenting the stories and allowed the advent of libraries.

The real game-changer was the creation of the printing press, where those who had the power and money could spread their word, their gospel to the masses. It was the start of mass communication, and a phase that we have struggled to break from. 

Print, radio and television are all mass communication tools. One-to-many. One message is broadcast or printed for the masses to consume and then the generic communication is interpreted in the best way it makes sense to them. 

As technology advanced, we had publishers and producers niching themselves, and segmenting the market into more refined tribes – business newspapers, fitness magazines, talk radio or cooking channels. It was a step in the right direction, but it still spoke to groups of thousands, if not millions. 

Feedback loop in communication

Mass media have always tried to assist the process of understanding the need for listening to your audience. In print we had ‘Letters to the Editor’ or ‘Op-Ed pieces’ and radio had Talk Radio or listeners calling in and giving their thoughts. It was a start, but a primitive form of allowing very limited feedback. 

The explosion of the internet in the late 1990s allowed for a much better feedback loop. Now the entire audience could respond to a piece of content. We still had mass communication, one-to-many, but there was a closed loop for the medium to change from a broadcast to a conversation. The audience could now be involved. 

Social media changes everything up

The social media platforms once again changed things up. The audience could not only reply to the owner of the content, but could share, like, endorse and comment. It was now one-to-many-to-many more. The audience became the amplifier of the message. 

Blogging and vlogging has now created a boom of content creators. We don’t only have the views of a select bunch of educated journalists, but we have the views of the masses being shared with the masses. And now we have many-to-many.

In the world of ‘many-to-many’, how do companies get involved in the conversation? Research by Nielsen tells us that 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than from a company. The sales gurus will tell you that ‘People by People’. It is the reason why companies invest so heavily in their front-line personnel. Then why, you might ask, do companies still think sending out generic communication or advertising is acceptable?

Audience of one

Look at marketing textbooks from 40 years ago and you will see there is a chapter on segmentation. There has long been an understanding that segmenting your market is better than mass communication, but technology advancement means that the expected segmentation is getting closer to an audience of one.

We can track what people are reading, liking, sharing and commenting, and even track purchasing behaviour. While some feel it is intrusive to use this information for commercial gain, others prefer to be spoken to as an individual and appreciate being shown content that they are interested in, instead of a bombardment of a plethora of unrelated images and content. 

Budgets are shifting from large above-the-line advertising agencies and prime-time slots to smaller content producers and influencers – but not fast enough. It is easier and sexier for marketing staff to produce a big budget television commercial on exotic locations than to try and understand their audience and segment them down as far as possible. 

The way forward is to try and talk to your audience as individuals. According to research from Yabkelovich Inc. we are exposed to over 5 000 ads a day. The only way to stand out in the sea of noise is to talk directly to the individual and to engage them with something that they are interested in. 

The other secret is to not only advertise but to offer value, entertainment, interesting facts and useful tips. Successful social media advocate, Gary V, says that as companies we should be sharing 20 pieces of relevant and engaging content for every piece of advertising. By doing this you have clients and potential clients connecting with a brand because they feel they are understood and heard. 

There is a shift from advertising to content marketing. To communicate through relevant and engaging content, instead of push advertising. Newsletters are not only personalised through the salutations but through the content in the newsletter too. Not only is it coming from the company, but from your account manager, broker or from your point of contact with the company. 

So where will you allocate your next marketing spend? Above-the-line? Below-the-line? Or directly with your audience?