Photo by Christina
People often don't choose to work with someone they can't remember, especially in the B2B marketing space.
To grow your brand, it's essential to make an excellent first impression but of course, it doesn't end there. It requires going further.
In the never-ending sea of information that flows past your prospects daily, you have no hope of connecting unless you deliver remarkable impressions that stick long after you've walked away.
What do I mean by "remarkable"? Remarkable means "worthy of being or likely to be noticed especially as being uncommon or extraordinary in a way that leaves people surprised or impressed."
Being uncommon or extraordinary may seem like a tall order, but here's the secret: you can do it. There are three things needed to make a truly remarkable first impression with your prospective clients.
Because we love to "Deliver Remarkable", I'll lay out those three things for you in this series. First, let's talk about the most essential yet often overlooked aspect of delivering remarkable: Making it personal.
Open up your email inbox right now; you'll likely see it, "Dear [first name], blah, blah, blah, blah and more blah we send to everyone." Not so personal. Using someone's first name doesn't equal being personal.
How eager does it make you want to open, let alone read? Especially when the auto-form filler messes up and leaves the "first name" field as FIRST NAME. This is a surefire way to be served up to swipe left to delete.
Instead of truly engaging, it leaves the wrong impression acting more as a nuisance than worthy of remark, given its standard practice outreach that hits our inboxes daily.
Now, imagine a different email or direct outreach communication. As it keenly relevant, it captures your attention as it appears more relatable to you. Perhaps it addresses your interests, personality, desires, or business challenges you're actively endeavoring to solve. How good would that form of communication feel? Maybe you've experience it. Yet, how often does that happen?
In the world of B2B marketing, it seems rare. This is one of the prime opportunities to deliver a remarkable impression. Whether its an email, direct mail campaign or a phone call, being personal means going beyond first name basis. Get relevant insights and make them known early in your communication.
What's really interesting, is that personalization is not a well-kept-secret weapon. Research shows that 74% of marketers know personalization increases customer engagement.
So how is it possible that this type of personalization will provide you a competitive advantage?
Because most marketers aren't doing it. Only 19% of marketers ever use personalization! That leaves a huge gap between head knowledge and and doing it. If want it to deliver a remarkable impression that executes true one-to-one communication, then you will be one of the few companies that will reap the benefits.
You might be sitting back and saying, "My prospect pool is too big. We could never do this effectively."
I'm going to ask you a personal question now. Is your audience size bigger than Coca-Cola? Likely not. You can use their global marketing campaign as inspiration of going beyond what is normal to your audience to deliver a remarkable personal impression.
Coca-Cola is constantly looking to reinvent themselves, without getting too far from their original formula. In 2011, they launched the "Share a Coke" campaign.
For this campaign, it meant doing something no one else had done in the beverage space. Placing personal names on every Coke bottle.
They started with 150 of the most popular names in Australia and decorated the bottle with one name each. People would walk into their local grocery or convenience store and see "Share a Coke with Jeff" or Tom or Stella or whatever their first name is.
How do you not buy a bottle with your name on it? The combination of familiarity (your own name) with something unexpected (a soda) is remarkable, not to mention socially sharable.
The campaign went so well in Australia, that in 2014 they launched it in the US. The result went beyond the impressions they made on customers. It delivered an increase in sales by 2%!
That 2% may seem small, but for Coca-Cola that means 1.7-1.9 billion additional in sales. When you already have a considerable market share, a jump like that means huge success.
Just as doing something extraordinary worked for Coca-Cola on a massive scale, personalization beyond what is normal in the B2B marketing space can help your brand deliver remarkable, no matter how many prospects you're trying to reach.
At UviaUs, we love making personal targetted outreach campaigns that surprise, delight and move recipients to take action. Whether it's an account-based marketing campaign or highly targetted direct marketing, we've been helping business deliver remarkable since 2007.
If your curious to learn more, we're always open for a chat.
